Hidden Pieces

The Wranglers are excited to welcome bestselling author Holly Jacobs to the round corral today. 

Even though I write fiction, there are always pieces of me—of my experiences, my hometown, my passions, my beliefs—that end up in my books.  Sometimes those pieces are hidden.  They’re buried in the story and only those closest to me see them.  Sometimes they’re not so much—or if they are hidden, they’re hidden in plain sight.

For instance, this month’s release, Just One Thing, has a few not-so-much hidden pieces that went into the story specifically for my online friends.  You see, I like Mondays.  I know, I know…it’s weird. Friends have told me time and time again how weird it is.  But for me, everyone goes to work or school and on Mondays, the house is mine again! 

And most Mondays, I post to my social media pages about my Monday Glee.  Friends there have come to expect the posts…and some even say they like them!  LOL  In Just One Thing, the heroine goes to the local bar and has one beer…once a week.  And when I picked the day, Mondays came to mind immediately:

            It was a Monday. I finished my day’s work, fed Angus, and headed for the bar.

            I went to The Corner Bar every Monday.

            Why Mondays? 

            Well, Fridays and Saturdays were for dates and desperate people looking to “hook up” with others. I wasn’t dating nor was I interested in hooking up. Sundays were for church, and it seemed wrong to go to a bar that day, even though I wasn’t attending church anymore . . . God and I weren’t on speaking terms. Still, no bars for me on Sundays.

            Midweek was filled with work around the cottage.

            So, Mondays were my day.

That’s not the only not-so-hidden piece in the book.  Most of my friends and family know I’m a walker.  I got a FitBit for Christmas from my husband (who knew it would combine my love of gadgets with my love of walking and setting goals) and decided to set a goal of 10,000 steps a day, every day this year.  (So far, so good!)  That came through in the story, too:

           Why did I walk?

            I could try to explain it in many ways.

            When I left the bar tonight, it would be dusk. Twilight. That time of night is like a soft grey blanket being laid over everything. Gently. Slowly. Until it’s complete and everything is finally black.

            I could tell Sam that I walked to drink in the scents. Twilight smells of silent things. Of dreams. Of hopes. Of memories.

            I could tell him that I walked to listen. You’d think as the world moves over from light to darkness that things would get quiet, hushed. When I lived in the city, that’s what I would have said.

            Instead, nighttime is a cacophony of sound. Insects buzzing. Animals rustling in the woods. Owls. Me walking. My footsteps always seem so loud. They make me sound bigger than I am, but the expanse of sky reminds me that I’m really very small.

            The stars. Oh, I could tell Sam that the stars are a large part of why I walk. They’re big and bright . . . not like in the city, where all the streetlights drown them out.

            Those explanations were all part of the reason I walk a couple miles every Monday night here, then a couple miles back. But there was a real reason—the biggest one.

            And that reason became this week’s one thing...

And as I think about this, there’s another fun thing in the book.  Every week as Lexie makes that walk to

the bar, she has one beer.  She’d asked for a Guinness the first day, and when they didn’t have that, she asked for a Killian’s.  Both are my favorites.  Like Lexie, I’m a one beer at a sitting sort of girl.  But I enjoy both! 

So, now even if you’re not my Facebook friend, you’ll see those bits of me in the story.  And next time you read fiction, you can wonder about how much of the author is hidden in their fiction.  Because truly, though I do have hidden bits, there are so many parts of a story that aren’t me at all.  They’re fully and truly the character’s.  Things I don’t think, things I wouldn’t do…  Maybe that’s what makes for a good story… the writer’s true nature mixed up with new ideas and feelings they want to explore.  I know that each book I write changes me a little, just as each book I’ve ever read has as well. 

Happy Reading!

~Holly

Just One Thing, by Holly Jacobs
www.HollyJacobs.com
Amazon http://amzn.to/1kWCZuj

B&N http://bit.ly/1ijwUo5