Love can make you do crazy things as Ruby Parker discovers when she dies and returns from the grave to unearth how much Leo Culver loved her. With the aid of bad advice from a ghost who is trapped by a curse, a little bit of magic courtesy of her unsuspecting half-sister, and a televised music talent show coming to town to hold auditions, Ruby Parker makes more of a mess in death than she ever did in life. Can she fix everything before it’s too late? Or will she spend eternity as a ghost, haunted by the unknown depths of love? Either way, one thing Ruby learns is that while love can make you do crazy things, it can make you do amazing things too. But at what cost?
…“I’d know if I was dead.”
While I watched my two best friends walk with arms around each other for emotional support, I wrestled with accepting Audrey’s version of the story. To do so meant I was dead. And dead meant I would never again speak with Leo. And there were so many words left unsaid, so much business left unfinished.
The final nail in my coffin came when a customer walked out and Audrey pushed me directly in front of the customer’s path. Instead of bumping into him, I fell through him, landing on my hands and knees. My skin tingled with pins and needles from where the body had passed through me. A loud noise filled my ears, similar to water flowing from a dam. For a split second my vision blurred. Then I watched in absolute horror as my hands and legs split into millions of tiny fragments.
Audrey might have been capable of delving into her mother’s magic bag to produce this neat trick, but I wasn’t.
I crawled into the gutter because it seemed the most suitable place for a reluctant spirit to bawl her eyes out. Audrey was kind enough to sit beside me with her hand resting on my shoulder; although we were both apparitions the contact still registered. I forgot about being angry with her and welcomed her company.
“Okay, I’ll admit this has been a rather extraordinary morning so you may be right.” I sniffed back the tears and turned to face her. “How did I die?”
“Your car slid down an embankment. You weren’t wearing a seat belt. Leo dragged you out of the car but it was too late.”
I jumped up. “Leo!”
While I watched my two best friends walk with arms around each other for emotional support, I wrestled with accepting Audrey’s version of the story. To do so meant I was dead. And dead meant I would never again speak with Leo. And there were so many words left unsaid, so much business left unfinished.
The final nail in my coffin came when a customer walked out and Audrey pushed me directly in front of the customer’s path. Instead of bumping into him, I fell through him, landing on my hands and knees. My skin tingled with pins and needles from where the body had passed through me. A loud noise filled my ears, similar to water flowing from a dam. For a split second my vision blurred. Then I watched in absolute horror as my hands and legs split into millions of tiny fragments.
Audrey might have been capable of delving into her mother’s magic bag to produce this neat trick, but I wasn’t.
I crawled into the gutter because it seemed the most suitable place for a reluctant spirit to bawl her eyes out. Audrey was kind enough to sit beside me with her hand resting on my shoulder; although we were both apparitions the contact still registered. I forgot about being angry with her and welcomed her company.
“Okay, I’ll admit this has been a rather extraordinary morning so you may be right.” I sniffed back the tears and turned to face her. “How did I die?”
“Your car slid down an embankment. You weren’t wearing a seat belt. Leo dragged you out of the car but it was too late.”
I jumped up. “Leo!”
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By D L Richardson
Change is the only constant in our lives. Humans either embrace change or they fight it. Change is either good or bad. Whether we like it or not, whether for good or bad, things change. We can’t control certain aspects of change, but we can control how we deal with it.
I teach a workshop on dealing with things we can’t change about the publishing industry. I can’t change how long it takes for a publisher to get back to me. Hurry up and email me, damn you! Even a “no” means I can move onto to the next publisher. So in the meantime, I write another book. Yeah, that’ll show them I mean business. And the truth is that is does show them that I mean business.
I also can’t change what readers like to read. If I write a book they’re not into, I can try to persuade them, but one thing I teach in this workshop is that readers will know what they’re looking for when they see it. I remind myself what it’s like to walk into a store and have a salesperson always trying to push items onto me to buy. So I no longer push the message of buy my books. Sometimes shoppers will think about a purchase and return later, but if a salesperson was too pushy, they’ll go somewhere else.
There has been a lot of change over the years of my writing. When I started writing we didn’t have computers. I had a typewriter. A typewriter meant I wrote very differently to how I write today – there was no backspace or delete buttons. I had to carefully phrase a sentence in my mind before I typed it, or risk having a page covered in white out. I then got an electronic typewriter where I typed half a page and it stored the text until I hit return, and then it printed out the text on the page, so it gave you some scope to backspace and delete. It took a few years before I got my first PC, and the writing got much easier. I could change something I’d written ten pages ago.
Another big change in publishing is the rise of ebooks and the decline of print books. I often hear readers talk about how much they love their print books. They love to hold them in their hands. They love to buy them. They love to see them on my shelf. I can understand this. I’m exactly the same. Yet, ebooks are more affordable and in today’s economy I find myself often buying ebooks, especially of new authors, because $20 is no longer a throwaway item. It used to be, and even though humans are highly consumable by nature, nobody likes waste. Ebooks offer a way for reading to read books that doesn’t hurt their hip pocket and they also offer a way of helping the environmental. But we still love books. We always will. We just might keep these as special treasures.
Another change is the decline of the printed newspaper. I think it’s sad, because there is nothing like sitting on the deck with a freshly brewed pot of coffee, a bagel or a slice of toast, and a newspaper. I often dreamed of writing a column for a newspaper. Usually I dream this while sitting on the deck sipping coffee and reading through the news of the world, as I interact with the rest of humanity on my own terms.
So where is this post leading? Well, I received a decorative notebook for Christmas. It has a lovely Chinese fabric cover and a lucky coin entwined with string on the front, a symbol of good fortune and I’ll take good fortune wherever I can. Lately I’ve been scrambling to come up with ideas for posts simply because when I sit in front of a computer is not always the time that the ideas float into my head. They float in my head when I’m sitting down for lunch, or when I’m watching TV or sitting as a passenger in the car. And so I am returned to taking notes in this notebook. I will carry it around with me. It will be a log of my thoughts at this particular moment in time, like a journal.
Some things will change. But some things have too strong a whiff of nostalgia to let go.
Change is the only constant in our lives. Humans either embrace change or they fight it. Change is either good or bad. Whether we like it or not, whether for good or bad, things change. We can’t control certain aspects of change, but we can control how we deal with it.
I teach a workshop on dealing with things we can’t change about the publishing industry. I can’t change how long it takes for a publisher to get back to me. Hurry up and email me, damn you! Even a “no” means I can move onto to the next publisher. So in the meantime, I write another book. Yeah, that’ll show them I mean business. And the truth is that is does show them that I mean business.
I also can’t change what readers like to read. If I write a book they’re not into, I can try to persuade them, but one thing I teach in this workshop is that readers will know what they’re looking for when they see it. I remind myself what it’s like to walk into a store and have a salesperson always trying to push items onto me to buy. So I no longer push the message of buy my books. Sometimes shoppers will think about a purchase and return later, but if a salesperson was too pushy, they’ll go somewhere else.
There has been a lot of change over the years of my writing. When I started writing we didn’t have computers. I had a typewriter. A typewriter meant I wrote very differently to how I write today – there was no backspace or delete buttons. I had to carefully phrase a sentence in my mind before I typed it, or risk having a page covered in white out. I then got an electronic typewriter where I typed half a page and it stored the text until I hit return, and then it printed out the text on the page, so it gave you some scope to backspace and delete. It took a few years before I got my first PC, and the writing got much easier. I could change something I’d written ten pages ago.
Another big change in publishing is the rise of ebooks and the decline of print books. I often hear readers talk about how much they love their print books. They love to hold them in their hands. They love to buy them. They love to see them on my shelf. I can understand this. I’m exactly the same. Yet, ebooks are more affordable and in today’s economy I find myself often buying ebooks, especially of new authors, because $20 is no longer a throwaway item. It used to be, and even though humans are highly consumable by nature, nobody likes waste. Ebooks offer a way for reading to read books that doesn’t hurt their hip pocket and they also offer a way of helping the environmental. But we still love books. We always will. We just might keep these as special treasures.
Another change is the decline of the printed newspaper. I think it’s sad, because there is nothing like sitting on the deck with a freshly brewed pot of coffee, a bagel or a slice of toast, and a newspaper. I often dreamed of writing a column for a newspaper. Usually I dream this while sitting on the deck sipping coffee and reading through the news of the world, as I interact with the rest of humanity on my own terms.
So where is this post leading? Well, I received a decorative notebook for Christmas. It has a lovely Chinese fabric cover and a lucky coin entwined with string on the front, a symbol of good fortune and I’ll take good fortune wherever I can. Lately I’ve been scrambling to come up with ideas for posts simply because when I sit in front of a computer is not always the time that the ideas float into my head. They float in my head when I’m sitting down for lunch, or when I’m watching TV or sitting as a passenger in the car. And so I am returned to taking notes in this notebook. I will carry it around with me. It will be a log of my thoughts at this particular moment in time, like a journal.
Some things will change. But some things have too strong a whiff of nostalgia to let go.
Music first captured the creative interest of young adult author D L Richardson. From choir, to her first acoustic guitar at age ten, to singing with the school band and performing in school musicals. When she left school she helped form her own rock band where she sang lead vocals, played bass guitar, and wrote all the lyrics. At age 26 she sold her equipment and focused on writing instead. She now has three novels and one short story anthology published.
Little Red Gem is a tribute to her former life as a musician and contains some of the author’s actual experiences, though she has never entered a national singing competition to capture the attention of the boy she loves. It is also a tribute to those brave young women who charge forward in pursuit of their dreams.
She lives in Australia on the NSW South Coast with her husband and dog. When she's not writing or reading she can be found playing her piano or guitars, renovating the house, or walking her dog.
Little Red Gem is a tribute to her former life as a musician and contains some of the author’s actual experiences, though she has never entered a national singing competition to capture the attention of the boy she loves. It is also a tribute to those brave young women who charge forward in pursuit of their dreams.
She lives in Australia on the NSW South Coast with her husband and dog. When she's not writing or reading she can be found playing her piano or guitars, renovating the house, or walking her dog.
The author will award to one commenter at every stop a prize consisting of one ebook, a bookmark and a laminated pass (the passes relate to the storyline).