The Making of a Novella! - Book giveaway!

Personal news:

I'm getting braces! Yes, the wire kind with rubber bands that last 3 years! Ugggg..  I've been putting this off and off, but finally decided it would be best. So if you see me at a book signing or conference in the next three years, please have pity on me and don't laugh!

I'm in San Francisco today with a great author friend who flew out here from South Carolina with her husband on business but they took the time to drive all the way from San Diego to the Bay Area (where I live.. and a good 8 hour drive!)  just to see me!  So, it's off to do the sightseeing thing in San Fran today.   I'll post pictures next week. My friend, Debbie Lynne Costello is a great writer, by the way, as yet unpublished, but I know she will be soon. Check out her website:  Debbie Lynne's Web Site!

Some of you may know that I recently had a new release, in addition to Veil of Pearls. It is a novella entitled Central Park Rendezvous. A novella is just a fancy word for short story or short novel. So essentially Central Park Rendezvous is a collection of short stories.  In this case, there are four stories written by four different authors (Yours Truly included). Normally in a novella, the stories are all tied together somehow, either with theme, location, or time period.  

If you'd like to win a copy, leave a comment on this post, along with your email. I'll choose a winner on the 21st!

If you haven't read the novella, each story is set during a different war-time period (Present day-Afghanistan, Vietnam, WWII, and the Civil War), each is a love story, each revolves around the same family, each ends with the couple expressing their love on the Bow Bridge in Central Park, New York, and each is tied together by an heirloom that Colonel Wolfe gave his fiance right after the civil war.  The piece is a Civil War Coin on which is inscribed Love Never Fails W.W. Central Park. Oh, and the theme of Love from 1 Corinthians 13 runs through all the stories.

The stories include
Dream a Little Dream, by Ronie Kendig  (Afghanistan Sar)
A Love Meant to Be by Dineen Miller     (Vietnam War)
To Sing Another Day by Kim Vogel Sawyer (World War II)
Beauty from Ashes by MaryLu Tyndall (Civil Awar)

Recently a reader wrote in with some questions about how in the heck did four different authors write four different stories that somehow all fit together in one neat story that spanned four different generations?  

Do you all live relatively in the same geographical area?  
Nope. Two of us live in California, but the others are spread over the U.S.

Who came up with this idea/suggestion? Who decided that it would be you four in particular ... are you all close or great friends (besides being fellow-authors)?
The entire Novella was Ronie Kendig's idea. I never would have considered writing a novella. I'm not very good at "short" stories.. I can do LONG.. but not short. LOL.  Ronie then contacted the rest of us to ask if we wanted to be a part of it. I adore Ronie so I didn't want to turn her down.  I know Ronie and Dineen pretty well.  I've never met Kim, but she's a doll to work with.

I am especially intrigued on how or who came up with this story-line idea of crossing the four generations?
That would be Ronie. We all did some brainstorming but it was Ronie who proposed we do a cross history military-themed set of stories that spanned 4 wars. (If you haven't read her books, she's got some FABULOUS military romantic suspense books!!) 

How did you each decide who was going to write about what era?
That was easy. We knew the 4 time periods we were writing about and we all simply chose the ones we preferred. Since both Kim and I are historical authors, we choose the earlier dates.. then Dineen got the Vietnam story and Ronie had dibs on the modern day one because the whole thing was her idea.
 
And how did you each know what to write about? Did someone sort of take
charge and say:  "you -- write about this", and "you write about that", and "I'll writeabout this"???     

I would say that Ronie was the chief conductor in all of this. I wish I had saved the tons of emails that passed between us all!  We plotted the entire thing over email, if you can believe that!  Once we came up with the heirloom coin idea being passed down, we knew we wanted to have the modern day couple find the heirloom and start looking into the history of it. After much discussion, we all agreed that the best way to do that would be to have the present day story (Ronie's) scattered between the other stories..  which I thought was a GREAT idea. The present day couple finds some old letter..etc.. and then we go back in time to the couple the letter talks about. That story is told, and then it's back to the present where their story progresses a little and then they discover something else about the past and then we switch to the past again.. to another couples story.. and so on and so on..  We were all JAZZED about the idea!!


Did you each individually come up with your own ideas for each of your eras, or, was it all carefully planned out/thought out/prepared as to how it would all tie in together, and everyone told what to write?   
Basically we each came up with our own ideas for our stories, but then we had to all get together, go over the ideas, and pull information that we needed from each others' stories, since some characters overlapped and we needed to get all our stories straight.  I had the easiest job since my story was the oldest and there was a huge gap between the Civil War and World War II where Kim's story picked up. So, I didn't have to worry about my story touching the other authors' stories as much.
 
Clear as mud?? 
Keep the questions coming!!
Have a great weekend, everyone!