Join me on Tuesdays to meet one or more of the characters from the series Claires Song: The Storyteller and the Healer( Book 2). amzn.to/1pBcpFr If you’ve read Flowers from Iraq (Book 1) some of the characters will be familiar—Kathleen and Claire, Gayle and Robert, Helen and Sam. And let’s not forget Linc Hathaway. Linc is the beloved Sherriff of Canfield and keeper of the secrets that are hidden deep within the storybook town nestled north of Santa Barbara, California. Perhaps Lincs own secret is the most shameful of them all. Before you begin reading, get comfy with your favorite drink in hand. If it’s coffee... well, just read on. Linc Hathaway, sheriff of Canfield, began his morning routine by wrapping his red-plaid blanket bathrobe around his spreading waistline. With a lion’s yawn escaping from his gaping mouth, he shuffled from the bedroom of his log cabin home into the kitchen. Grunts and groans followed as he reached into the pantry for his most recent acquisition, Black Ivory coffee beans—arabica coffee beans fed to elephants, re-collected from their feces, processed, and sold exclusively to five-star hotels. It was a gift from his son, Flynn, the manager of a hotel in Thailand. Linc thought of himself as a coffee connoisseur. He scoured the Internet for the most exotic brands but scoffed at the “sissy” ways to make coffee: French press, vacuum and single-cup coffeemakers. He knew the best way to get that elusive perfect cup. “Yup,” he said as he reached for his mother’s blue enamel coffeepot. First, a precise amount of beans were weighed and placed in the coffee grinder. While the beans were being ground, he added filtered water from his reverse osmosis system to the coffeepot. Then onto the stovetop burner it went, and voilà—in a few minutes, the best cup of coffee in the world. The most difficult part was listening to the spurting sounds the pot made and knowing he had to wait precisely five minutes and thirty seconds to taste perfection. Linc surveyed the perimeter of the kitchen. The cabin walls made from handcrafted logs would outlive him—a legacy to be passed on, but to whom? His three sons were scattered around the world and doing a damn good job of making lives of their own. The last thing they wanted was a charmingly rustic—if a trifle drafty at times—log cabin nestled in the hills of Canfield. His gaze rested, as it did every morning, on the kitchen countertop. A long, flat, unblemished block of rare wood that consistently made his heart skip a beat and his chest swell with pride. The log cabin and Linc had been together for more than twenty years. His longest lasting relationship, he mused. Those before years seemed so far in the past that their memory had become scattered and out of focus. Continued in Chapter 1 of Claire’s Song. amzn.to/1pBcpFr I welcome all comments and questions.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 16:26:15 +0000