Good day, my bookish peeps. I’m attempting to recover from another bout of bronchitis along with my daily migraine episodes. Adding insult to injury, I’ve also been experiencing a myriad of tech device issues over the past week due to operating software upgrades. Thankfully, I was able to escape into books while dealing with the tech issues at least. The medical issues are routine, so no biggie. If you’re like me, you TBR list has probably grown exponentially over the past year. Each time I find a new-to-me author (don’t you love when that happens), I end up adding all of that author’s books to my TBR list. Today, I’m pleased to welcome one such author to the blog. Barbara Howard, author of Final Harvest, will be discussing the evolution of the main character in this book. So sit back, grab your favorite beverage, and let’s hear what she has to say. (I hope you’ll add Final Harvest to your ever-growing TBR list.) Thank you, Ms. Howard for joining us today, the blog is now yours.
I love answering questions about the characters, the origin of the plot in my stories, and how everything was created. One thing that I’ve mentioned often is that I start out with a character in mind but of course they evolve as you put them in different areas of conflict throughout the story. And, as the plot moves along sometimes the character turns out to be someone quite different than I originally planned. That’s the case with my main character, Traci Simmons.
I am not Traci and she is not based upon anyone that I know. But there are a few things in her life that I can relate to and, as I mentioned in an episode of my podcast, I find that more and more people are contacting me to say that’s the case for them as well. They can either relate to something that she’s going through or something that she’s feeling. I’ve had several people tell me there were points in the story where they actually cried – not that it’s a sad story, but it just touched them in a special way. And every time they tell me that, it makes me cry, too. I love when people meet Traci and embrace her and can find themselves somewhere in the story.
I’ll add this, there are bits and pieces of me in the story. I am a quilter. In Final Harvest, there’s a mention of a quilt in the attic. Also, all of the different vegetables at the farm are my favorites that I like to grow in my garden. They’re all listed in detail for the market day. Many of the street names and some of the business names came from my genealogy research. I found records of my ancestors in different rural communities and counties in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio, and all around the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. I mapped out where they lived back in the 1800 – early 1900s. I jotted down the different names of streets or roads or highways or things like that and I incorporated some of them in the story. So, I guess you could say that I’m in there, bits and pieces of my life.
There’s no one that I took out of my life and put into the pages. Having said that, there are moments when I was writing this series that it did touch me emotionally as if I was standing in Keeferton and I could feel the setting around me. So when I hear back from a reader that they got to a certain point and either the foreshadowing or the climactic moment or the action leading up to it grabbed them or made them cry or made them get totally absorbed into the mood of the story … It makes a big difference to any author to know that what you’re trying to convey actually jumps off the pages and into the hearts and minds of the readers. Saying all this to say this: I really am grateful and thankful for your comments and appreciate everyone who has taken the time to read, share and reach out to me about my books. Thank you so much.
Barbara Howard
Final Harvest (Finding Home)
by Barbara Howard
About Final Harvest
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Publisher: Independently Published (August 1, 2020)
Paperback: 164 pages
ISBN-13: 979-8655968134
Digital ASIN: B08BKZ58YF
Traci Simmons has been fired from another job and must decide if it’s time to give up her home and start fresh in another town. But, when her elderly neighbor dies mysteriously, she is pulled into leading a crusade to save the neighbor’s urban farm and find the killer. Through her new and unexpected relationship with these invisible people, Traci faces her own insecurities to learn what home really means.
Purchase Link – Amazon
About Barbara Howard
Barbara Howard is a “not-so-cozy” mystery and YA author of a dozen books, including her most recent trilogy, Finding Home Mystery Series; Final Harvest, Charlotte’s Revenge, and Milo’s Journey. She is a first-generation tech geek turned master gardener with a passion for fresh air, vegan cuisine, and tracing her roots. A big city girl with a small town heart, she returned to her family home in the Midwest after an extensive career as a Department of Defense Project Manager at the Pentagon and spends most of her time treasure hunting, spoiling her fur-babies, growing veggies, and raising chickens.
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The Book Diva's Reads 
Thank you for featuring my book, Final Harvest. I hope you enjoy meeting Traci and following her story. And good luck to everyone that enters the giveaway!
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