Christine Roney, Author

Category: Blog (Page 1 of 4)

blog

Rayning Justice: Season Four

When a childhood friend is accused of murder, Stevie Rayne finds herself drawn into another high-stakes case. Emma is accused of killing her husband while sailing off the coast of California.

In this gripping tale of friendship and deception, Stevie sets out to uncover the truth about what really happened on that fateful sailing trip.

Stevie Rayne is back in Season 3 of Rayning Justice!

Season Three of my serialized legal thriller, Rayning Justice, is available to read on Kindle Vella right now. This season, Stevie once again finds herself walking the halls of justice when she is reluctantly pulled into a murder case.

All she had to do was pick up a dog. Simple, right?…It starts with a phone call. Stevie’s friend, Billie, has been tasked to execute a court order in Minnesota to retrieve a dog named Blu from Owen, his non-custodial owner. She was hoping to meet up with Stevie, who is traveling in Canada, for some girl-time before heading back to California. Excited to see her friend, Stevie picks Billie up at the airport and together they go to pick up Blu. But Blu isn’t there. And Owen isn’t talking.

A missing dog. A murder. A mystery to be solved. Don’t miss this season of Rayning Justice!

Click the photo below to read the first three episodes for free.

Season One of Rayning Justice is now live!

Season One of my serialized legal thriller, Rayning Justice, is now complete and can be read here!

And Season Two has begun!

Stevie Rayne is back on the road and is heading north toward Canada in her RV with her dog, Bo.

Before she gets to the border, however, a winter storm causes her to find refuge in a campground located on the outskirts of a small town.

While there, she learns that a man is on trial for an arson fire that killed a local volunteer fireman. The townspeople want swift justice and many have threatened to take that justice into their own hands.

When the storm finally abates and Stevie is ready to get back on the road, a knock on her door leads her to wonder if there is more to the story than meets the eye.

A story full of courtroom drama, small-town intrigue, and twists and turns.

Click the photo below to read the first three episodes for free!

New Legal Thriller!

Although it was only going to be a brief pause in time for my podcast stories, life happened and they are on pause for a while longer.

BUT you can now read my stories instead of listening to them!

Amazon has launched a new platform for serialized stories – Kindle Vella.

I have a brand new legal thriller on Kindle Vella which you can read on your iphone or on Amazon.com.

You can read the first three episodes for free! New episodes posted weekly.

Just click this link: https://www.amazon.com/Rayning-Justice-Stevie-Rayne-Story/dp/B0985YH9VR

Rayning Justice: A Stevie Rayne Story

Stevie Rayne traded in her partnership in a prestigious law firm for a life on the road. Now, she travels the highways in her RV with her dog, Bo. The sense of freedom is intoxicating.

She has no desire to handle cases anymore and when she is asked to defend a young woman accused of murdering the man who ghosted her, she says no. A murder case doesn’t fit into her plans. But…

Dancing On The Razor’s Edge

Welcome to Day 28 of the Summer Blog-a-day event!

Today, I’m sharing an excerpt from my novel Beyond Stone. This is the story of an artist who, reeling from grief and guilt, starts to fall down the rabbit hole. But at her darkest moment, three of her sculptures come alive to try and save her. It’s a story in which Andie walks the line between reality and fantasy, never sure which side she’s on.

This is a slightly abridged excerpt. Also, while this novel does not have a lot of strong language, it has some, so any instances of such language in the excerpt have been removed or changed for the purposes of this blog post.

Chapter One

The moonless night cloaked them from prying eyes. But it also made their job harder.

“Hurry up, Andie”

“I’m trying not to hurt any of the roses.”

“Forget the roses, let’s get out of here before somebody sees us.”

“I’m almost finished. Help me position her.” He moved from his lookout position over to Andie. “I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

“Quiet, Eddie. Just come over to this side of her and lift.”

They worked swiftly. When they finished, they looked at each other, then ran off in different directions still cloaked by the darkness of a moonless night.

***

Andie felt the sunshine on her face and knew she had overslept. She jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to the living room and switched on the television. The news was just ending. She started to switch channels but caught herself just in time. She hit the reverse arrow on the remote and the DVR rewound through the news to the beginning. She sat down to watch.

Nothing. She checked all the news channels. There was nothing in the news about her and Eddie’s exploits in the park.

She went into the kitchen and made coffee. She was just about to sit down and write a few lines for her speech when her cell phone rang.

“It’s all over the internet,” Eddie said.

“What are they saying?” she asked, excited that it was starting.

“Check it out. Gotta go.” He hung up.

Andie ran upstairs and grabbed her laptop off the nightstand. She ran back downstairs and set it on the table before her. She turned it on and took a sip of her coffee as it powered up.

When her start page came up, she clicked on the bookmark for her favorite news site. And there it was. The photographer had captured the scene of her and Eddie’s crime perfectly. And it was a thing of beauty.

Chapter Two

Andie moved swiftly through the crowd toward a small makeshift stage placed in front of a heavily-veiled secret. She stopped as she neared the front of the crowd that seemed to be held in-check by some invisible barrier, and watched a band of dark clouds rise out of the horizon and sprint across the sky.

A microphone squealed sending birds flying and squirrels scampering. The crowd grew. A man’s voice boomed.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I think we better start before it begins to rain.”

The man with the microphone was short with a pleasant round face and a rather square body. A fringe of brown hair laced with grey circled his balding head. He waited while the crowd quieted and turned their attention to him.

“It is with great honor that I introduce you to the artist that created the installation you are about to see. She is known world wide for her innovative public art. Her installations and sculptures have won her many prestigious awards. Ladies and gentlemen, Andrea Connor.”

She emerged from the crowd, walked to the stage, and took the proffered microphone from the Mayor.

“Thank you, Mayor Evans. And thank you all for coming. The inspiration for this installation came from negotiating the busy streets of this City and wanting a moment of respite. I hope you enjoy it.”

She looked over at the two workmen standing in front of the veils. She gave a slight nod and they pulled them down.

The crowd emitted a collective gasp. Then, applause.

Nestled in a circle of freshly mowed grass were three sandstone benches, each with an intricate carving along the top and sides. A slate monument stood in the middle of the circle. Tall like a monolith. Carved on the face of the monument were the words: “Take a seat, sit awhile, breathe in the sea, feel the sunlight kiss the earth — ecstasy.”

The Mayor took the microphone again.

“Please walk around this Circle of Tranquility as Andrea has named it. Sit and enjoy a moment of respite.”

As the Mayor talked, Andie’s eyes skimmed the crowd, passing over but then swinging back to pair of dark eyes staring at her. Tommy? She moved a little to her left to get a better look at the man’s face but he’d already melded back into the crowd.

“Thank you all for coming,” the Mayor said.

Andie watched a man dressed in a dark suit push his way through the crowd. Not good. A cop? Did Eddie and I screw up somehow? She started to turn around but then saw the microphone in his hand. A reporter.

The man continued to push through the crowd toward her. Behind him, a man dressed in jeans and a polo shirt hoisted a large video camera onto his shoulder. When they got to where Andie stood, the man with the microphone introduced himself as Bob Monroe and asked her a few questions about the Circle of Tranquility. Then he got to the real reason he was there.

“Andrea, what do you think of LuCent’s latest stunt?”

“I haven’t had a chance to see it yet,” she answered, then leveled her gaze at him. “What do you think of it?”

Put on the spot, Bob hesitated then stammered something only he could hear. The cameraman smiled as he filmed Andie walking away.

***

She walked over to her latest creation and watched a man run his fingers over the small discreet gem inlaid in the monument above her signature. This was her trademark. In every sculpture she created, she imbedded a gem somewhere in the piece.

Several people walked up to her. Among them was a man she estimated to be in his mid-twenties. A little boy, who Andie guessed was about five, hung on his back piggyback style, and a little girl, who couldn’t have been much older, held his hand.

“Did you carve all those pieces by hand?” the man asked. The girl released his hand and moved behind him clinging to his pant leg.

“Yes,” she answered noticing the deep blue of his eyes. She looked at the child, who peeked out at her from behind her father’s leg with the same blue eyes. They played peek-a-boo until her father took her hand and walked away.

A touch on her arm pulled her attention back to a small group of people that had gathered around the installation. Questions flew at her. Smart phones recorded everything. Tweets about her work were sent around the world. Selfies were taken.

She watched the little boy and girl play in the Circle while their father talked on his cell phone. Her brother used to play with her like that. The man put his cell phone in his pocket and called to them. She watched as the boy took his sister’s hand and led her out of the Circle to their father’s side. She missed her brother.

The threatened rain began to fall. Andie turned her face up toward the sky and let the drops fall on her. But in moments, it was a downpour. She watched the few remaining people run for shelter. She was about to do the same, when the rain suddenly stopped. She started to walk toward her car, but then turned and looked back at the Circle of Tranquility and saw a leprechaun having lunch.

***********************

Thank you for visiting my blog today.

Before you go I would like to share some exciting news with you. Two days ago, I launched The Roney Writes Podcast! The tagline for the podcast is “let me tell you a story….” And that’s what it’s about – stories. I’ll be sharing stories that I have written every week. Some will be several episodes long told over several weeks, others will be just one episode. I’m unbounded by genre so there will be stories for everyone! If you’d like to learn more, please click here.

Go to the  Summer Blog-a-day event page to visit more blogs!

The Spark That Fires Up Our Imagination

 

I was recently asked what makes a story come alive. My short answer to this was that a story comes alive when the words on the page not only propel the story along but also create imagery that allows the reader to experience the story both intellectually and emotionally. When a reader identifies with the characters and feels what the characters feel, that’s when the magic happens.

But the question started me thinking. When most of us think of “story”, we think of being entertained. Someone has spun a tale that makes us laugh, or cry, or scares the heck out of us.

But stories are about people — about the characters who populate the pages. (What about animals, you say, there are many stories about animals and not people. Take Watership Down for example. Yes, but in those stories we attribute human traits to the creatures that run around on the page.)

What I want as a writer is to create characters that readers see as living, breathing people. In order to do that they have to live and breathe for me. Otherwise, they will lie there on the page — lazy, boring. How do you create rich, developed characters? Through the story! We get the sense of who a character is by how he/she handles what we throw at them.

I rub my hands together in anticipation of being that puppet master that walks her darlings through an obstacle field before they can get to the prize — which is dangled before them at the far end. What they experience, physically and emotionally, as they face each obstacle reveals who they are to the reader. Conflict is what makes things happen in a story and it’s what shapes our characters.

Soon after a story begins, an event should occur that changes your character’s path. He/she is faced with a problem or a complication that he/she must deal with. If not, and everything in your character’s life is and stays hunky-dory then there is no story, at least not an engaging one.

This article is not a primer on writing but in order to examine what makes a story come alive, conflict must take a mighty bow.

I said above that I relish putting my characters through hell on their journey to claim the prize, but when I started writing one of my biggest problems was being too nice to my characters. And creating characters that were too nice! So even though I loved the protagonist in that story, she was kind of boring. I had to throw things at her, I had to create conflict within her and outside of her. And when I finally and reluctantly did that, the story began to live. She became someone the reader could relate to and care about, someone to root for.

A story also comes alive when the writer creates visual images that pulls the reader into the story world. An example is John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Through the use of imagery, Steinbeck invites the reader into the Row to see its life, its pulse, its heart. When I read that book, I became a short-term resident of Cannery Row.

Stories are part of our everyday life. Whether it’s our spouse relaying his day to us, our friend telling us about how she got a traffic ticket on the way to our house, our co-worker telling us about her dog’s newest antics. Stories are how we relate, how we communicate. It’s the way we as humans connect to each other.

A storyteller who is a writer captures the spark of a story and puts it on the page to fire up our imaginations.

(Originally published on Medium on May 17, 2018)

Check Out My Stories On Medium

First, as you can see I have revamped this website – a new look for a new era in creativity!

Next, I’ve started writing articles on Medium. From time to time, I will post some of those articles here. In the meantime, click here to go to my profile page on Medium where you will find a list of my articles.

 

2018 And Beyond

The BookLoverWorm blog is hosting a month of guest posts from authors about their plans and hopes for 2018. I’m delighted to have been included in this fun feature. Check out BookLoverWorm’s blog and my post here.

 

« Older posts

© 2016-2024 Roney Writes

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑