Romantic Mystery Hero - Col. 3 -Andre Demontagne
In
A Dream Across Time
This is the third column reflecting our perceptions of our characters and various aspects of our novels.
Roger's note - These columns work best for the person who has actually read the book. Otherwise they are fairly abstract. But they serve as archives related to this book and those to come.
Oh, Andre! You remember him. He’s that great guy who’s a little clueless about women.
What is he really all about?
One form of the cliche is that, "You can take the boy out of the island but you can’t take the island out of the boy." Andre stands with his two feet firmly planted in different worlds.
There’s more to this stance than meets the eye.
It’s not unusual for children in a family to be picked out for very different roles. His brother, Emile, went abroad for his agronomy studies and was chosen to return to tend the family holdings on St. Lucia in conjunction with his father, Auguste. Andre, in contrast, was chosen by his matriarch mother, Clarisse, to be the child who sought his fortune and the expansion of the family’s worth in the larger world.
Clarisse chose well because Andre has the brains and the personality to succeed in the world at large. So, he was sent abroad for an education where he chose finance as his career which would serve his goals in venture capital endeavors. Clarisse directed him toward a mission to develop the family’s future but Andre had his own mission as well which was to aid his island people in developing their future.
Children of the Caribbean islands are often sent abroad because opportunities are limited in these small island republics. But almost invariably they later return home because their roots are deep in the islands.
Andre’s success depended not just on his brains and talent but his personality. Andre is one of those people who sets a goal and then follows it through with a well planned system. The problem for men like Andre is that they may find success but not all parts of the plan mesh with reality. Andre saw bright, beautiful Taylor as the perfect wife with whom he could make a family and build a future on St. Lucia but Taylor saw her future differently. Fortunately for both of them, Taylor saw herself clearly and, while she loved him, she did not see herself fitting into island life. Certainly not when she was lying in a sand pit in the middle of the night.
A successful marriage is often built on having things in common. But marriage also depends upon having complementary and supplementary views and orientations. Then the whole truly becomes more than the sum of its parts. Andre needed a partner who could address the realities of his world and who would share his dream for his island country.
Partnership for Andre very much included fidelity. He sought fidelity in his love relationship and was faithful to the missions for his family and his people. He took risks and pursued his dreams, finding his way to his goals in ways he could not have suspected. How fortunate for Andre to find just the right woman to share his dreams!

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

Self publishing is such fun. We were rolling along this summer preparing for the publication of the second edition of A Dream Across Time in January. Of course we did have other irons in the fire such as having our house up for sale now that we had settled on another house. Just when we had things going nicely in the world of publishing some nasty soul pitched up and wanted to buy our house. We have to move! That's not fair! How can we move, develop the third novel and work on publishing all at the same time.
Being a small outfit there is no one to whom we can pitch the ball and say, "Carry on. We'll be back in about a month."
Now my "to do" list for today becomes: confirm registration for ABI with Bowker (Since you can't talk to anyone in cyberworld you never quite know if what you did worked), get a quote from a floor refinishing guy (Everybody has a cell phone where sometimes you can leave messages which they receive), evaluate the work of website designers (That is, if their sites open up same day - bad indication), reserve a truck (It would be nice if it was available in this county), consult with wife about paint colors for the new house , run PC-cillin (I think I have a virus), get terms and conditions to accountant for review (He owes me a favor), make a run to the dump.
That's today's list and does not reflect the overall status of our publishing empire or work on the latest novel.
I just started tomorrow's "to do" list after looking at my mail which sometimes doesn't arrive until after dark. Go figure!. Sometimes I think I have the mailman from the movie Funny Farm. Anyway, the list starts out with some of the items from today's list and continues with: "buy trash bags" and continues with "ask accountant if we have to register our corporate personal property in the new county and if so when". It probably takes as much time to re-register (or whatever you call it) General Motors as it does for our little publishing enterprise.
But, I've come to believe that the cruelest cuts in life are self inflicted. Such as putting your house up for sale and then someone inconveniently comes along wanting to buy it. Also on the self infliction list has to be self publishing.

Question - Looking for a new home and moving means a lot of driving. Driving leaves a lot of time for thinking or reading signs on the highway. Over the interstates in Maryland we have signs exhorting us to "report suspicious activities". They don't tell us what that means so your imagination can run wild. I think members of Congress as a group engage in suspicious activities. To whom do I report this? My next door neighbor has all the characteristics of a desperate housewife and engages in suspicious activities. Should I report her and to whom? I think this moving thing is already getting me flaked out.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

Romantic mystery heroine- Col. 2 - Jamie Elliott Demontagne
This is the second column reflecting our perception of our characters and various aspects of our novels. We begin with Jamie from A Dream Across Time.
Column 2 -
In the beginning we had a general story outline for A Dream Across Time but needed a lead character who had characteristics we could admire. We wanted a woman who was gutsy, independent, committed, loving, creative, intelligent, and dedicated. Totally unacceptable was a woman who was a victim, weak willed, indecisive, and a poor communicator. How often have all of us suffered through books where, if the characters talked to each other, the story would have been over in ten pages? The woman who became Jamie had to be a modern woman with real strengths.
Our setting and the story seemed to work better if she was married but, as a person living in the real world, Jamie needed to have a less than stellar marriage. When we sent early drafts out we found a surprising number of people who thought Jamie should have immediately dumped her husband, Paul. As psychotherapists and experts on stepfamilies, we wondered if these people who were so quick to bail out had ever made a go of a marriage. One of the objects of marriage is to try to grow together and it can be uneven. Jamie is not a quitter and marriages need to be given a chance. Maybe a new start for the marriage WAS indicated.
Did she make an error with Paul in marrying him? Perhaps. We can go to pop psychology and speculate about how marriage to him was "just what she needed". That it was "perfect", etc. Baloney.
Human beings are programmed to get married and have children. As much as we may love the characters on Sex and the City, we do not aspire to their lives. We aspire to what they aspire to. It’s a fundamental goal to want marriage and family.
We can speculate about how Jamie might have been neurotically playing out deficiencies or pathology in her family of origin. Dredge up the collected works of Sigmund Freud and get out the fluffy duster. Now, let’s see. On second thought, forget it. Maybe that would be pointless. Not just because Jamie is a fictional character but also because people make honest efforts which sometimes don’t work out. Maybe Jamie married too soon after her father’s death and maybe Paul looked like a good bet. He might have grown up. Grown with her. We get married with high hopes and for half of us it ends in divorce. Move on.
Now we really get to the heart of the issue. What did Jamie do? Her husband had turned out to be a philanderer who was working hard on a case of alcoholism. When that was fully dawning on her, Jamie had a choice to make. She could go back to the States and "safety" or stay in an alien culture and take the "risk". She made a rational decision. In the States Jamie had only "safety" and a familiar environment. On St. Lucia she had found a beautiful island, lovely people, a job she might not have found in the States, and she had such a good friend in Barbara.
She also had to decide about a relationship. Her husband had turned out to be a "rat". Should she take a chance on another relationship, another man? Should she dream and go after the dream?
As you can see in the story, life was hitting Jamie hard. Jamie was determined not to turn tail and leave. She picked herself up, dusted herself off and started all over again as the song says.
We understand that sooner or later death will come knocking at our door. But what about when life is at the door? Do we pretend not to be at home?
How did Jamie come to this position of being so willing to confront life as it came? Life came to the door, she answered and she was dealt a hand full of dreams. A hand she took willingly, with commitment. Did her mother do a really good job of instilling confidence in her daughter? Let’s hear it for her mother! But then did Paul’s alcoholic mother sow the seeds of his problems? Is she responsible, in the end, for how his life turned out?
Oops! Was that "let’s blame it on Mom"? Parents get a lot of undue blame AND undue credit. We’d like to take credit for the accomplishments of our children but before we get too puffed up with their achievements or too guilty about their failures, it requires a close look at the record. Some really rotten kids come from great families and some great kids come from rotten families. Parents have an influence but kids have choices.
And this is who Jamie is. She has beauty, brains and talent. Squandering all those gifts is one option. She chose to make the most of them as she faced loss and adversity. For Jamie, the book shows some possible answers to the questions, " Where will you be if you dream? Who will you be if you dream?"
What will be true for you if you dream?

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

We write romantic mysteries and from time to time I get to thinking about what we chose to write about in A Dream Across Time. Both of us were mental health people before we joined the stampede away from managed care and enriched our lives by marketing villa rentals in the Caribbean. We had considered doing psychological thrillers but we couldn’t develop any enthusiasm.
In looking at various options we did what you are told to do. That is read, read, read to get an idea of possible areas of choice. Our inclination was to write romances but I wanted to research it more. I was planning a family visit to the other coast and went and sat on the floor in the romance section of a bookstore where I rooted through the offerings to find some diverse reading. My wife thought it was hysterical that her husband was hanging out in the romance section and I did get some odd looks.
On the plane I got more odd looks as I worked my way through all manner of romances. Some of it was good and some of it was just plain awful. Being a psychologist I value communications between people and many of these people could not communicate about anything. If they had just talked there would have been no book which was an appealing thought in regard to some of the offerings. By the time I got back to Kansas City I used the time between flights to rush into a bookstore and buy a thriller. The cover said it was by someone WITH Tom Clancy. Shame on him. It was not well put together and not well edited. What really rubbed me the wrong way was that there is so much bias against self published works. And then I see that kind of dreadful book coming from a major publishing house.
So it was back to romances, some of which were not bad at all. I learned not to stay with something that was turning me off from the beginning.
The experience set me to thinking about what people read and why. Men by and large don’t read romances which is a shame. Let me correct that. It may be that they don’t admit to reading romances. After all a well written romance should appeal to men because, if we are lucky, we are in love with a woman and should find a woman toughing it out and winning love an appealing story.
Of course, there are romances and there are romances. I had researched personality manifestations in paintings for my dissertation and learned it is very difficult to categorize art of any kind. The same is true of romance. It may be about a love affair, an ardent emotional attachment or even just a short term fascination. Then too the dictionary refers to the mysterious fascination which may occur. I like the "mysterious" part of it. A Dream Across Time is termed a romantic mystery and the paranormal quality adds another dimension of mystery. There is much about romance which is mysterious and that is precious. And if you are really lucky, the mystery stays long after the wedding.
And so my wife and I settled on writing romances. But our personal values could not be detached. It was unacceptable for our heroine to be a victim or weak. For us the story had to be about what we value so highly which is partnership growing out of the love affair. In short we decided to write about what has so enriched our own lives.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

St. Lucia - Helen of the Antilles - Column 1
We have been told that St. Lucia as depicted in A Dream Across Time is essentially a character in the book. So, let’s begin by acquainting our readers with this wonderful place.
Just in case you didn’t know, St. Lucia is a real island country in the Windward Islands (eastern Caribbean). It is known as Helen of the Antilles because of its extraordinary beauty. Soaring volcanic peaks, lush vegetation, rain forest, turquoise and emerald waters.
It is an island rich in natural beauty and in the multiple hues of its people who come from South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. It has an equally colorful history having changed hands 14 times between the British and the French. St. Lucians use English predominantly but there is also a widely spoken French based patois which is spoken with a west African cadence.
We tried to be historically accurate. There WAS a guillotine erected in the square in Soufriere during the French revolution. And there WERE brigands who were slaves fighting for their freedom. To be fair, while there were atrocities committed by both sides, the brigands were essentially freedom fighters trying to escape bondage.
In recent history St. Lucia was a colony of Great Britain. They gained their independence in 1979, just one year before our heroine, Jamie, came to the island. At the time the island was poor and primarily dependent on its banana industry. Tourism was in its infancy. As our hero, Andre, saw so clearly, tourism was to become the primary industry and St. Lucia has undertaken to protect their beautiful island including their precious rain forest and parrots which are endangered and number little more than 20. Parrots were chosen by us as a symbol of the struggle for responsible development and of heritage.
The story of St. Lucia since independence is remarkable. The people of this country have worked hard to protect and develop their agricultural industry and develop tourism. It has not always been easy but the transformation indicates success.
When we first came to St. Lucia in 1987 the roads were terrible and the infrastructure strained almost beyond belief. The effects of colonialism were apparent. We displayed one of them in the incident where Jamie and Barbara encountered a sullen shop girl who "accidentally" broke the mirror Jamie wished to purchase. This type of behavior is technically called passive-aggression and is one of the few ways that people who live under colonialism and slavery can fight back against those who are in power. It is a tribute to the St. Lucian people that this type of behavior has all but disappeared. Now when we go into a store we are greeted almost immediately by someone who asks, "May I help".
In recent years we have seen a burgeoning middle class, a greater distribution of economic benefits and a much improved infrastructure. Also, very importantly, St. Lucia now has a transparent government. In short, in a brief period of time this society has made great strides. What they have achieved by their own efforts is a model for developing countries everywhere. You can see that the St. Lucians have inspired us and the dedication of A Dream Across Time to the people of St. Lucia was the only logical choice.
It was his country and his people that Andre wished to assist and that Jamie fell in love with. Not at all surprising.
Look for A Dream Across Time by Annie Rogers

For Much More Come See Us at www.annierogers.com

We are self publishing and it has been hectic around here with a swirl of ISBN, ABI, EAN etc. which is why I haven't posted much recently. I have also had to deal with the website, annierogers.com, which we discovered was far too confusing and was not working as a sale site for the first book, A Dream Across Time. We received invaluable input from our Yahoo self publishing group. So I have been out looking for resources to put it to right technically.
One of the things we will be doing is moving our Insider Information columns over to this blog. Before setting up the website I reviewed over 100 websites by other fiction authors. I thought they weren't very interesting in that there was usually just information about a current book and past books and little other content. I couldn't find much reason to ever revisit them. We had thought that we would create an event on our website by putting up these columns but, along with other things we included, we found the event was confusion.
The columns were intended to share the adventure of the writing process. I am a recovering clinical psychologist who left the field because of the problems with managed care. My wife is a clinical social worker. We worked in a joint practice specializing in stepfamily problems. But we found that we could not practice ethically with the way managed care functioned. So, we joined the stampede of other professionals who were exiting the medical and mental health fields. Having the opportunity to develop a specialty travel business we threw ourselves into marketing short term villa rentals in the Caribbean. As we spent more and more time in the Caribbean we found ourselves with a wealth of stories. It was then that we decided to begin to write them.
I found myself on a plane to St. Lucia reading a not very good book. Mala and I felt we could do better and set out to write our first novel. It was such fun and we love joint projects.
With our mental health backgrounds we were in fat city when it came to goal, motivation and conflict. And so we wanted to share our perspective on our characters and it also gave us the opportunity to share cultural perspectives and what we found in the writing process.
Do you begin to get the drift about the choice of the title of this blog? Yes, I will be digressing. Look for commentary, perspective, missteps and our self publishing adventures. Oh yes, self publishing is an adventure. But it is also so much more satisfying although the learning curve sometimes feels asymptotic. But now we have an integrated approach. We work out the stories, we write the stories and have control of things such as pub dates and marketing.
Next up look for Column 1 which is about the magical tropical island setting for A Dream Across Time.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com