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Number One * The First * A Beginning
Unknown • Aug 30, 2019
MYERS & REED:
THE BLOG
Number One * The First * A Beginning
It’s August 28, 2019 and our second book under the Myers & Reed
umbrella is in print, the third collaboration between Helen R. Myers and M. Gail Reed.
Our first was as Helen Foster Reed with June M. Foster titled A FLOCK OF SPARROWS, which is still available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
But June moved to North Carolina with her family and remarried, making collaboration even more challenging; however, you’ll see her supportive posts on Facebook
and our beloved SPARROWS is always available whenever M&R make an appearance somewhere.
So, why a blog at this stage?
For one thing, we’ve been asked for one repeatedly.
God bless readers for their curiosity.
Once they like your books, they want to know everything about you, as well as the process, plus what you’ve
been reading, what films you’ve seen, who you know in the business, what music do you like…it doesn’t end.
As long as you continue to buy our books, we don’t mind.
We may not answer everything you ask, but we’ll give you a reason.
If you’re finding this by accident, you might want to know how we began.
I’m Helen R. Myers, author of fifty-one previous books in various genres published in twenty-eight countries and twenty-five languages.
I’m a USA Today bestselling writer, and have been nominated and won enough awards to make it legit to say so.
M. Gail Reed is currently the office manager at the Franklin County Historical Association.
We’re both in Northeast Texas in case anyone doesn’t know that yet.
Gail has also been a special features journalist, is published in university press short-story anthologies, and previously worked for the government and Fortune 500 companies.
In 2006, I suddenly lost my husband of thirty-one years to a pulmonary embolism.
Gail also abruptly lost her husband in his sleep in 2011.
Shortly after that June lost her husband to cancer.
The publishing business was in massive turmoil, much like the music business was several years before, and I was quickly discovering that I could no longer write the genre fiction I was being asked to write.
Fortunately, independent publishing was becoming a feasible and respected option.
While dealing with a bitter winter for the south, Gail sought a way to deal with her tumultuous emotions, as she explored what widows do in such precarious situations.
When June approached her with a similar feeling, they began what was to become A FLOCK OF SPARROWS.
But they quickly realized they didn’t know what to do after that great brainstorm about widows coping on their own during a winter storm.
That’s when Gail approached me.
We’d already been friends for years, and I saw this as a perfect time to get my mind off my own challenges.
And so the partnership began.
We wrote an almost fifty-page synopsis so all three of us could see how the story would flow, and how the characters would act and develop.
Then on weekends, Gail and I would get together and write, while June, now in N. C., was given the task of thinking up scene ideas that would fit the characters and plot.
During the week, I’d edit.
For our final edit, June returned to Texas and we spent two days taking turns reading the book out loud.
It was as fun as it was cathartic and, yes, we used up a box of tissues and opened a bottle of bubbly in the end to celebrate our achievement.
For Myers & Reed’s first collaboration, LIFE & SPICE: Vite e Spezie
, Gail and I traveled to Galveston to tell the story about how the hurricane of 1900 still touch lives today.
It felt like a “God moment” when we found a restaurant that fit our location perfectly.
We had to take some literary license for other buildings, but we were very pleased that people found our glimpse of the restaurant world “realistic” and the story’s ending provided a surprise that was unexpected.
Now we’re in the midst of launching THE LIFE WE CHOOSE.
For this one we’ve returned to Northeast Texas, to Hopkins County and Sulphur Bluff, a small town along the Sulphur River.
This is a psychological and dramatic story about
family, spirituality, and love incorporating a special needs child and senior care, and if you count the animals, there’s nearly one hundred characters in it.
Small wonder it took close to two years to write, instead of the one we’d intended.
If we had our way, the book could easily have been another hundred pages longer; however, we forced ourselves to cut out scenes.
As in all of entertainment there are economics involved in storytelling.
You have to be mindful of pricing as much as anything else, and we knew we’d be narrowing our audience if we told a longer story.
So far, readers are telling us that we did the right thing.
And, yes, to answer another question, even as we do the promotions for this release, we’re well into the next book.
Please come back for our next post!
Myers & Reed
