She is no longer waiting for the future - A Life, Freed (Rowan Sloane #3) by Tracy Hewitt Meyer

Description:

On her own for the first time, Rowan Slone is no longer waiting for the future. She’s living in the present, and relishing every minute of it. She has a new boyfriend. She is helping best friend, Jess, raise her five-month-old son, Jacob. And she continues to work as Assistant Manager at the animal shelter-all while settling into her first semester of college. Rowan’s stars are aligned and she’s not looking back.

But all is not as golden as it seems. Being a young mother is too much for Jess to handle, leaving Rowan to shoulder much of the burden of raising Jacob. Trina becomes involved in a religious cult causing Rowan to fear she may have lost her sister forever. And her mother has a new psychiatrist whose goal is to get Rowan into therapy, forcing her to deal with her mother, and the past, once and for all.

Adding to the rising turmoil, Rowan’s first love, Mike Anderson, returns, and wants to see her. She is surprised how much she wants to see him too. But his sudden reappearance makes her wonder if there is room in her future for the boy with the pine-colored eyes or is it too little, too late?

As the winds begin to stir, threatening to send Rowan’s carefully-built life into a tailspin, she must search deep inside herself to discover what she truly wants. Will soul-searching help her achieve that elusive sense of peace and family she’s always craved or will the pain of the past prove too great?

GUEST POST

Keeping Real 

about how to create believable stories even if they are incredible

I love this topic because, as an author, I believe there are no storylines that are off-limits. Regardless of how bizarre, incredible or unbelievable plots can be, if the author writes the story the right way, readers will relate to it and, in the end, believe it.

Well, then. How does one go about writing that believable yet incredible story?

It all comes down to the characters. If you make the characters relatable, then you can have freedom to make the rest of the story, i.e. plot, setting, etc., outrageous.

How does an author make characters believable? One of the simplest ways is to make sure that the character has human attributes. I don’t mean eyes, ears, and a mouth. Of course they need these things. What I mean is quirks that make them seem like someone the reader knows or has seen in the street or watched on television. The characteristic needs to make the character real.

Examples of this could be a lopsided grin, a pert nose, a pigeon-toed gait. Rowan Slone, the heroine in the Rowan Slone series, has a petite frame and is insecure about her figure. How many sixteen-year-olds feel that way? Further, how many women feel that way? Justified or not, having insecurities about our bodies is all too common. If the main character in a paranormal romance is a woman, regardless of whether she is a Goddess or a changeling, she can be relatable if she has crooked teeth, is taller than her male counterpart, or if she has body issues.

But the physical isn’t the only way characters can be believable. How they handle emotions and react to their environment is another important way. Maybe the most important way.

Katniss Everdeen, Tris, and Bella Swan have something in common. These young women are vulnerable yet tough. They cry when they are upset. They blush when they are embarrassed. They fight when they are angry. They love the guy who is absolutely not the right guy, but somehow, in the end, is. Who hasn’t felt these emotions and dealt with them in similar ways? It doesn’t matter if the setting is a futuristic game of life and death. Or if the society is divided into factions. And it certainly doesn’t matter if the cute guy is a vampire or a werewolf.

For Rowan Slone, it would be unlikely that many readers would have her exact history. Her past is traumatic and devastating. But how she handles her life is the way that readers can identify with her story. She cries when she’s hurt. She smiles when she’s happy. She falls in love and experiences disappointment. She is loyal, intelligent, sympathetic and hard-working. These characteristics have nothing to do with setting or plot. The story is set in Appalachia but it could easily be set in the 1800’s, in the future, in India. Rowan’s character traits are what make her human and real, and that transcends time and space.

To make an incredible story believable, start with the characters. It begins and ends with them. Make them raw, emotional, human...real. For inspiration, simply look around. The rest of the story is where the imagination can run wild.

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About the author:

Tracy Hewitt Meyer is a multi-genre, multi-published author of new adult fiction as well as adult paranormal and contemporary romance. 

She has a B.A. in English and a Master of Social Work, both of which feed her true passion-a love of writing. 

Born and raised in the beautiful state of West Virginia, Tracy now lives in the mid-east with her family, a goldendoodle, and a bearded dragon.

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