My mom wrote some memoirs, this reminds me of it. Such a wonderful thing for your family to have. I want to create some kind of book with mom's stuff. But who knows if I will ever find the time . . . thank goodness she found some time. I like to think that I encouraged her. I didn't nag her to do it but at least I told her it was great that she was doing it. She took a writing class which was why she was doing it. I am one of those people who thinks family stories, and story telling in general, is rather important. So did my librarian mom. Glad to hear others feel the same way!

For a special father's day gift, I dedicated my short stories to my dad...and they just published them on Kindle Unlimited. So excited!!! : ) https://www.amazon.com/Down-Well-other-Short-Stories-ebook/dp/B01HAOEZKE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1466380794&sr=1-1&keywords=down+in+the+well Here's the link...and there are a few small spacing issues, but I'm hoping to get those fixed tomorrow. I can't find them in my draft, so I'll call tomorrow and ask the experts. Thank you all for your support and encouragement! I know this is really special for my dad and I don't know if I would have tried publishing these stories, without your kind comments about the blog. Thanks, again!

Just wanted to add that they changed the 'read inside' section, so now there are three stories available for free. Hope you'll read them! Also, my next book of short stories is going to be about my mom's great-grandparents. They were both deaf and homesteaded a farm in the Dakota territory. Amazing what people did back then! They actually had families with money, but wanted to prove they could succeed on their own.

Hi Lavender, I love your characters and the promise of this story. You've got a nice start with writing it. If you were writing in my category (young adult) you'd have a REALLY good start. Every genre has its own set of expectations. When writing for teens and young adults you'll almost always find short, snappy sentences. You'll also find a lot of new sentences that start with transition words like so, and , or but. That's what you've done at the beginning of your story. However, this isn't a novel for teens; it's a Victorian romance. Romance readers, and (I think) historical romance readers in particular, seem to like a more formal, wordier style. The words you choose and the way you structure your sentences can help establish tone and set the the story in the proper era. I played around with the first few paragraphs to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, but I'm no victorian romance writer so -- if I were you, I'd consider researching a few popular novels in the genre to get a better idea of what readers might expect: She would be coming to his classroom that afternoon. Henry Lastname set to putting things right, shelving a book here, straightening a pile of papers there as he tried to think about something, anything else. His opportunity to teach had come at the grace of a wealthy neighbor. Despite being born deaf, she’d thought him a bright child and had paid for his education. The chance to find books, to learn to communicate with others like himself, to establish a career as a teacher, it was all more than his family could have dreamed for him from their small tenant farm. Henry inspected his classroom with pride. He’d done well for himself, had gained the respect of the headmaster and the entire community. He knew he should be satisfied, but memories of the farm often crept in as he graded papers and settled petty disputes between the students in his charge. The lovely way the sun rose over the hills in the morning, the brilliant colors as it sank in the evening, and his horses -- how he longed to have his own horse again. Some days it was all he could think of … when he wasn’t thinking about the girl. The way she braided her lovely blonde hair around that pretty head of hers seemed to fill his own skull with all manner of indelicate thoughts. The yearning to run his fingers through those braids was chief among them. He reminded himself, yet again, how inappropriate this would be. Not only was Clara Lastname a student, she was also the daughter of an influential mayor of a nearby city. He was so involved in pushing away his thoughts that he jumped when he felt a soft touch on his shoulder. I hope you can get the idea from my pretty pitiful effort, lol. I don't read a lot of this genre, but I do read a lot of aspiring writers' works. You have a big head start on a lot of them. You have a nice way with dialogue and, even in this first chapter, you've already established the most important thing in romance writing -- chemistry. These two are full of it! Figuring out the voice of your story is all that's holding you back. I hope you'll accept my advice in the spirit it was intended. If I didn't think you had the ability to take this story to another level I wouldn't have bothered chiming in. Lavender Lass, you've got a good story to tell and the talent to tell it. P.S. A word about marketing if you don't mind. Just like there are genre expectations in the writing of the book, readers have expectations about the way a Victorian romance novel should look. Pretty women in beautiful dresses (and a bare chested man if you can find one) seem to be the norm. You might want to take a look at canva.com In just a few minutes I was able to put together this: To Share A Dream With You