My greatest asset as a writer is my memories. It is
from my memories of my grandparents and their conversations about their lives
that I was able to build a foundation for my historical stories. From them and
my parents I learned a wealth of knowledge about how a household was run
without modern conveniences, what they did to earn a living in those difficult
economic times. I also learned what they
did for entertainment in a time before anything with a screen existed and even
radios and telephones were a rarity. Hard to even imagine, isn’t it?
My Paternal Grandparents, Matilda & William McNeal
My grandfather McNeal was a post Civil War baby, born
in 1867. He had a well with a hand pump beside the kitchen porch. He bought a
little red school house with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. He
paid for it outright, no mortgage. A coal burning potbellied stove sat in the
living room and heated the whole house. In the beginning, it had no electricity
or plumbing. By the time I came along, he had a sink with running water and
electric lights. I don’t remember him having an electric stove. He had an
outhouse. Because his eyesight became bad in his elder years, he had a rope
from the house to the outhouse. My grandfather and grandmother were both
scholars with certifications for teaching, but my grandfather earned the
greater portion on his income from painting houses. He had no horse or
automobile, so he walked everywhere, in every kind of weather, even bitter
winters in Numidia, Pennsylvania. My grandmother did not work outside of home
in order to raise their three sons and take care of the household. She, however
fought for women’s suffrage and was definitely her own person from all
accounts. I never had a chance to meet her. She and my two uncles had all died
before I was born. He died when I was just six years old, but I remember him
and that little house vividly. I wrote my time travel story, THE VIOLIN, based
on these memories and what memories my father shared with me about his years
growing up and about his brothers and parents.
The Man in the Cover is my Uncle John McNeal for whom THE VIOLIN was written
THE
VIOLIN
Can
the heart live inside a violin case? Can a message reach across time?
Genevieve Beaumont is haunted by dreams of a drowning man she is helpless
to save. When she buys a violin and discovers news clippings and pictures of
its owner who died from downing inside the case, she realizes he is the man in
her dreams.
She travels to the little town where he died 90 years before to
investigate who he was and how he came to drown that day. Little does she know
how her own life will be tangled in the mystery…until she steps through the
threshold of time to 1927.
Excerpt:
She heard him take in a slow breath before he spoke to her
in a more relaxed, quiet tone. "I beg your pardon, miss, I didn't mean to
curse. What's your name?" The younger man’s voice soothed her as he knelt
beside the couch where she lay. He wrung out a cloth in the bowl of water
beside his knee, folded it, and applied it to Genevieve's brow.
"My name is Genevieve Beaumont. I was just standing at
the window and now…I'm here." She lifted a shaky hand to her brow.
"My head is pounding."
"You bumped your head when you fainted. Is that a
French name?" He lifted a quizzical
brow and smiled.
She lifted her eyes and got a good, close-up look at him
then. Her heart almost stopped beating in her chest. She sucked in a deep
breath. What was happening to her? How could any of this be possible? The man
holding the cool cloth to her head was the man in the pictures she found in the
violin case!
She would not have guessed he had auburn hair, or that his
eyes were such a vivid, bottle green. He wore a collarless, khaki shirt with
the sleeves rolled up and suspenders instead of a belt held up his tan, canvas
trousers. Oh, but he was handsome—so much more than his pictures ever allowed.
She didn't have time to admire the young man's good looks because her mind
swirled round and round with the unfathomable implications of her situation.
My earliest memories of my maternal grandmother are
from the time when she lived in an old Victorian house on a farm. She had a big
green coal burning stove that heated the kitchen, which was huge, and their hot
water from a tank on the side. The bedrooms upstairs had fancy iron grates in
the floors that could be opened or closed to heat the rooms above stairs. I
also recall all the chores my grandmother performed cooking on that stove,
cleaning, washing clothes and hanging them on the line, ironing with an iron
she heated on the stove, and looking after the chickens and the baby chicks.
She was busy all day long, yet she enjoyed sewing, quilting with her friends,
knitting, and crocheting—and she considered all that fun. She also went to
visit her friends on Sundays which was a treat because they traded goods with
one another, the same the women on the frontier did. Visiting was a pleasure, a
comfort, and a news exchange.
I used much of what my grandmother did in several
stories including “A Christmas Visitor” in the new Christmas anthology, SWEET
TEXAS CHRISTMAS. My only regret is I didn’t ask my grandparents more. There is
so much more I wish I knew.
SWEET TEXAS CHRISTMAS is an anthology of sweet historical
western romances that take place in the state of Texas written by veteran
western romance writers: Stacey Coverstone, Sarah J. McNeal, Cheryl Pierson,
and Marie Piper.
(my contribution) A Christmas Visitor
Prairie Rose Publications
Releases November 2, 2017
He left her…Now he’s back…But not for
long…
Sterling
Thoroughgood was Matilda Barton’s first and only love, but he left her three
years ago to seek his fortune in Wyoming. And now he’s come back with a puzzle
box as a gift with a secret inside. But as far as Matilda’s concerned, it’s
three years too late.
Is love lost
forever or does the mysterious puzzle box hold the key to happiness?
Excerpt:
“Don’t you even think about stepping up
on this porch, Sterling Alexander Thoroughgood, or I’ll shoot a hole in you big
enough for a team of horses to jump through.” The woman wearing a faded blue
calico dress aimed the shotgun straight at his heart…and sometimes his liver
since she wasn’t holding the shotgun all that steady.
Sterling raised his hands in the air.
His bare hands were practically numb from the cold. He glanced up at the slate
gray sky. Snow’s comin’. Then he
grinned at the woman holding the shotgun. “Merry Christmas to you, too,
Matilda.”
She dipped the shotgun for just a
moment, but raised it again as if on a second thought. “What do you want here
after being gone for three years? Did you break some hearts up in Wyoming?
Maybe you have some fathers and brothers gunning for you and you thought you’d
come running back here to hide.”
Well, there it
was. He’d hurt her when he left and she wasn’t about to let him forget it.
Sarah
J. McNeal is a multi-published author who writes
diverse stories filled with heart. She is a retired ER and Critical Care nurse
who lives in North Carolina with her four-legged children, Lily, the Golden
Retriever and Liberty, the cat. Besides her devotion to writing, she also has a
great love of music and plays several instruments including violin, bagpipes,
guitar and harmonica. Her books and short stories may be found at Prairie Rose
Publications and its imprints Painted Pony Books, and Fire Star Press and
Sundown Press. She welcomes you to her website and social media:
