Beth Carpenter Books

May this Christmas be filled with your favorite things. -Beth

Did you ever try to catch a lizard when you were a kid? I did. It’s not easy. They’re incredibly quick, and they don’t often get too far from safety. Meet Roxy – Lizard Hunter. She’ll spend hours prowling around rock walls and rip-rap piles, sniffing in the cracks and looking for lizards. She’s had little success, but the occasional lizard sighting or scent is enough to keep her hunting. I was thinking today that a career as a writer is a little like lizard hunting. Someone said eighty-one percent of people surveyed wanted to write a book. I have to wonder why, because another survey said only seventy-two percent actually read even part of a book last year, but that’s a topic for another day.  The point is there are a lot more people writing than there are publishing slots to fill. Sending out queries to agents, hoping to catch their interest, is a little like sniffing around the rock pile. Just as Roxy occasionally spots a lizard, occasionally an agent will as...

Today is Thanksgiving, a day set aside to take stock of all the good things I tend to take for granted. Family, community, home, health, country, pets, books, love, laughter, and so much more. I have so much to be grateful for. It’s funny how even bad things can turn out to be blessings, like that broken leg in March that gave me lots of couch time to write one of the two stories that led to a writing contract in September.  I’m thankful for good medical care and a devoted husband who picked up all the slack while I was laid up. I’m thankful to the people who shared their knowledge and experience to help me become a better writer. And I’m thankful for the support of my friends and family. My cup overflows. What were your special blessings this year?

Can a car be a work of art? I vote yes. I’m not really a car person, but even I can appreciate the sinuous curves of a Chevy Corvette. I should say Corvettes, because in the  Corvette Museum  in Bowling Green, Kentucky, we got to see Corvettes of all vintages, and I’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite. Seeing these amazing cars, many displayed in historical dioramas, makes me wish I could climb into Roy Orbison’s '67 Vette and roar off to explore Route 66. The Corvette factory is here, too, and in the entryway to the museum, brand new Corvettes sat behind velvet ropes, awaiting their proud parents to come and claim them. The museum also contains an unintentional display of a natural disaster. In February of 2014, the cave under part of the museum collapsed, creating a huge sinkhole that dropped eight Corvettes thirty feet into the earth. Fortunately, the museum was closed at the time, and no one was injured. The cars have been pulled out, bu...

Two years ago, a garden experiment resulted in an  overabundance of gourds.  I've been trying to find ways to use them ever since. These are small gourds, about four or five inches tall, so they're not really big enough for birdhouses. I've been dying, painting, and woodburning them, and even adding polymer clay. Results have been, shall we say, mixed. I'm not much of an artist, but I've been having fun. My latest project turned out fairly well. It involves making gourds into Christmas tree ornaments, for indoor or outdoor trees. It's a fairly simple project. If you'd like to try your hand at gourd-craft, here's how I did it. You'll need a gourd, a pencil, a small paintbrush, and paint. Also a woodburner, a jump-ring, jewelry glue, and spray-on clearcoat, all optional. 1. Clean the gourd well, scrubbing with a stiff brush or steel wool. You'll need to remove the natural waxy coating so the paint will stick. As they cure, gourds get this u...

Here's a chance to do good and have fun. A group of wonderful writers have joined together to produce this collection of fourteen holiday novellas, and the proceeds go to to diabetes research.  I've got my copy. Amazon:  http://amzn.to/2dAY66F iTunes:  http://apple.co/2cX72oE BN:  http://bit.ly/2dKwRI6 Kobo:  http://bit.ly/2dQ6Kg1 Google Play:  http://bit.ly/2cZGZZ1

I love autumn. Love the harvests, the cool evenings, the pumpkins. I usually make an apple pie. One of the few downsides of living in Alaska and Arizona is we don’t get those incredible fall colors. Oh, we get some nice golden aspens, and the mountain ash are lovely and covered with berries. Just not the incredible blend of warm shades I’ve seen in pictures of hardwood forests. But I’m hoping I’ll get my fix. Next week, we’re visiting my husband’s grandmother in southern Illinois. I'm always amazed by the huge variety of trees there, and if we’re lucky maybe the leaves will have started to turn. I can’t wait to find out. In the meantime, this is my own spin on a fall display. Mums, because they’re traditional and beautiful. Sweet alyssum, because the lacy honey-scented flowers appeal to my romantic side. And hot peppers, just to spice things up a little. How are you celebrating Autumn?

Wealth can be a burden. Just ask Roxy. Two weeks ago, I spent a dollar on a new squeaky ball for her. She loved it! In fact, she loved it so much, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. We’d play fetch and it would roll under the bed. Roxy would do her best to lift the bed high enough to crawl under, and when that didn’t work she stood at attention and pointed out where the ball was hiding until one of us would get a yardstick and knock it out. She’d grab the ball the moment it shot out and prance around the room, thrilled that her precious was safe and sound. It was also great for her favorite game, Hide the Toy in the Blanket. She’d sniff and feel around until she’d located the lump, then pump it with her paws to make it squeak until she’d worked it free. In between playing sessions, the ball went in the bin with the other toys, but she couldn’t be sure it was safe there. She’d stand next to the basket, staring at it and trying to convince anyone who walked by t...

There's something so satisfying about getting a bargain. I think it's a gene I inherited from my grandmother. She once bought a cashmere coat because it was 75% off, only to discover it was too heavy to wear in Texas. The good news is that when I moved to Anchorage, she gave me the coat. I've been having fun decorating my guest room. The nice thing about a guest room is there was no huge hurry to get it completed, so I was able to take time and poke around for treasures and bargains. It started with this side table I found in an antiques mall. I've always loved the stacked suitcases look, but this one is even better because it has a real drawer and a map theme. Later, I found a matching box and couldn't resist it.  Then we got the bed, sort of a modern take on mission style, but needed another night stand. I found one on Craig's list, used gel stain to change the color, and decopauged some antique map wrapping paper on top. Did you know Mod-pauge was still ...

It all started with a tweet. Well, that's not true. It started several years ago, when I first heard about a one-page contest for Harlequin Heartwarming books. I sent in the first page of my current WIP, and it was good enough to move to the second stage: three chapters and a synopsis. That was AFTER THE FIREWEED , which is now up for nomination on Kindle Scout. Turns out the mystery/romance ratio was a little high for Harlequin, but the encouragement I received got me excited about the possibility of writing for Harlequin Heartwarming. Several rejections later, I felt like I was honing in on what they wanted. My agent was highly encouraging after reading my latest stories. She submitted them to Harlequin. I knew Victoria had my manuscripts, and that's where the tweet comes in.  When I saw it Friday, my heart started racing. My daughter and mother-in-law were here for the weekend, and I read it aloud, assuring them it probably wasn't me she was talking about. S...

I grew up on peach pie. Thanks to the foresight of my grandparents, we had a peach trees that yielded bushels and bushels of juicy, delicious fruit. If you’ve never had a tree-ripened peach, you don’t know what you’re missing.  They bear only the slightest resemblance to the peaches you get at the grocery store.   My mother used to give away grocery sacks full, but there were still plenty left to fill the freezer and use in ice cream and pie. So, in honor of the end of summer, I decided to bake a peach pie, homemade crust and all. I did have to use grocery store peaches. We actually have a peach tree in Arizona that blooms profusely, but thanks to late frosts, we’ve never harvested a peach.  The pie wasn’t quite as good as my mother’s, but maybe that’s just fond memories of childhood. It was still pretty darn good. The recipe is below. So what are you eating these days? Are you still enjoying summer fruits or have you moved on to pumpkin lattes and apple pie?...

AFTER THE FIREWEED is up for nomination on Kindle Scout.  It’s a romantic mystery, or maybe a mysterious romance. Anyway, it’s sweet and cozy, and a fun read.  And it takes place in my hometown of Anchorage, Alaska. Fireweed is that pink flower on the cover. It blooms in spikes, starting at the bottom and working its way up the stem. Local legend has it that when the blooms reach the top, summer is over. And in this story, summer's end means the heroine has to leave Alaska and go back to her real life.  But if she does, an innocent man be be convicted of murder. If you’re not familiar with Kindle Scout, it’s a program where readers can read excerpts from books and nominate their favorites. If any of the stories you nominate is selected to be published by Amazon under the Scout program, you’ll get a free advance copy of the e-book. Anyone with an Amazon account can nominate a book, and you can have up to three nominations active at any time. More nominations ...

Lately, I've been thinking about miracles. Not the big ones, like a building collapsing around someone, but a beam falls in such a way that they're somehow protected. Not even the medium ones, like the odds of my future husband's college roommate happening to be a friend of my college roommate. I've been thinking about the ordinary miracles we see everyday, if we take the time to notice. Like the beautiful berries on the mountain ash trees in Anchorage this year. A warm summer coupled with lots of rain in August mean lots of berries for the cedar waxwings to feast on this winter. Or there's this view of the Little Su during a sunny break on an August day. Every year, salmon hatch here, and eventually make their way to the ocean. They'll spend their lives there, but eventually something sends them home, where they'll fight their way up this river in order to lay and fertilize eggs, and the cycle starts again. Isn't that amazing? On the flight fro...

When you're at home, do you visit the local tourist attractions or does everyday life get in the way? I never seem to get around to enjoying all the things people come all the way to Alaska to see, but I'm trying to do better. Which is part of the reason why, after living in Anchorage for twenty-five years, I finally made a visit to the Reindeer Farm in Palmer, in the shadow of Pioneer Peak. The other reason is that I'm writing a Christmas story set at an Alaska reindeer farm, and I wanted to get a firsthand impression. Yes, that's a buffalo in the photo. There are more than just reindeer at the farm. Dolly, a plains bison, has lived her whole life there with reindeer, and probably doesn't even know she's a bison. She was born late and only grew to half the size of a normal bison, but she's had a good life on the farm. When we arrived, we were greeted by this lovely fellow who gave us a sniff and went back to chasing sunbeams. While we waited for our tou...