Blog Post by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

“Everyone loves the beach.”  Ah…no.  I hate the beach.  There’s salt in the water.  Whose idea was that?  The salt gets in your eyes.  You have to shower when you get out of the water which seems like a poor use of natural resources.  And all that sand.  What good is sand?  You can’t grow soybeans and feed corn in sand.  Worse that the salt and the sand is all the skinny people at the beach, the slender nymphs in tiny bathing suits that I might be able to use as a bracelet.

My characters don’t go to the beach; they go to lakes.  Lakes have real water; they have gently sloping banks of soft grass.  Yes, aluminum docks get hot and the wood ones can be splintery, but no dock has ever crept into your shoes, come home with you, and ended up  in your sheets.

Lakes have trees.  Trees are good for people who get sunburnt.  Trees are also good for novelists.  You give your characters a blanket , and they go off for a little private time among the trees.  You can’t do that if your characters are on the Jersey shore…at least you shouldn’t.  Characters can also get snowbound at a lake, and who doesn’t like a good snowbound book?

What about the slender nymphs? Aren’t they at the lake?  Yes, if their parents dragged them there. They  have tugged a sweatshirt over their tiny bathing suits and are sitting in the corner, being pouty.   Your inner beauty will outshine them  every time.


The Endless Season

Freelance graphic artist Caitlin McGraw is living the hipster life in San Francisco when a jury summons brings her home to North Carolina. But doing her civic duty wasn’t supposed to include a reunion with Seth Street, the celebrity Olympic medalist—and Caitlin’s teenage love. She fell hard for Seth at thirteen, only to lose him when he left in the middle of that third summer . . . when everything changed between them.

You never forget your first love, and a decade of fame and fortune as the face of professional snowboarding hasn’t dimmed Seth’s memory of seemingly endless, perfect summers. Now, sequestered with Caitlin on a high-profile case, could Seth have a chance to rekindle those feelings of the past? Amid family conflicts and hard-hitting revelations in and out of the courtroom, Seth and Caitlin face some tough hurdles. With so much at stake, can they trust in what they’ve reawakened in each other and turn this season of change into a lifetime of love?