This week I'm giving away two copies of Sweet Dreams at the Goodnight Motel. Simply leave a reply to this post, and I'll put your name in the hat and choose two winners at random late Saturday or Sunday.
I had forgotten that this edition of the book contains a bonus--an excerpt from the upcoming Chin Up, Honey. It's a short excerpt, but I think it gives a good idea of the book, as well as a chuckle or two.
"Where do your stories come from?" I am often asked.
"From everywhere," is the best answer I can give. I'm sure there were things going on in my life at the time I wrote Sweet Dreams at the Goodnight Motel, things now forgotten, that I expressed in this story. Then I hear things around the neighborhood, or in the checkout line at Walmart, or memories that percolate up in my mind.
One memory that I see came up in this book and tickled my fancy was of those vibrating beds that motels had back in the sixties. I can recall trips with my parents and pestering them to give me quarters to put in the machines. Then my younger brother and I would lay on the bed and be amazed and giggling.
A new character, Claire Wilder, is the heroine of this story, but Vella Blaine, one of my favorite characters from the Valentine books, has a prominent secondary role. Winston returns, of course, and the young ones, Corrine and Willie Lee. I think with each of them I explore various issues of coming of age at every age. And as always, there is the strong thread of the meaning of family, and the many absurdities of living life on earth.
I like novels that have humor. I think there may be more truth in humor than in serious drama. There are also certain novels that I save to read just before sleep.
I just finished reading the old novel, Life With Father, by Clarence Day. It was, of course, about his father, during the late 1800s, and a family. It became a long-running Broadway play, and a movie with William Powell and Irene Dunne. I would read a couple chapters of the book each night for well over a week. It was perfect to soothe and touch and warm me before sleep, although a couple of times I was laughing out loud and fearful of waking the husband and cat.
What novels have you enjoyed reading at bedtime?
Blessings,
CurtissAnn
