This Memorial Day

We remember.

In the Author Spotlight: Annette Snyder

This month in the Author Spotlight, please welcome
Annette Snyder.








Thank you Linda, for letting me slide over to your corner of the world to brag about my latest news.
Respectable Affair, the third release in my World War II series, is out this month and I’m pretty excited to say, it’s a good one. An inspiration started out as one story based on my grandmother’s life with Viveka’s War and continued with a novel defending the morals of a character in Eureka Springs, now has a final chapter. Respectable Affair tells the story of matriarch, Virgie Seidle, and her life protecting those closest to her and a community where she found solace.

Here’s a blurb of Respectable Affair:

Between Virginia Seidle’s terrible jaunt with men and Nolan Vickers’s upheld honor toward his institutionalized wife, no one in town openly faulted the pair for banding together to raise Nolan’s son, John. When love blossoms, would people be as accepting?

Can Nolan and Virgie put their clouded pasts behind and keep their affair respectable?

If that isn’t enough, here’s a snippet:

“Rebecca? Audrey? What is going on?” John looked at the two women. He’d known them all his life. They were Virgie’s best friends. They’d gone to college together and remained constant in each other’s lives.

Audrey lived and worked in Eureka Springs and their family gatherings were always intertwined.

Rebecca married Virgie’s brother Truman and, though she lived in Nebraska, weekly phone calls closed the distance.

It seemed so strange that neither woman mentioned the reason he and Ruth had to fly in for a formal visit and even stranger that Barbara was present and Audrey said nothing about a trip. The most bizarre? The way the two friends seemed to fumble about as if no one knew what to say next. “Okay, ladies. What in the world did you call us up here for? I’m sure it wasn’t to let us sit around and stare at each other.”

Rebecca put her hands in her lap and glanced from Audrey to the other three. “Audrey and I have something to tell you. A story.”

Audrey took a deep breath and reached to stroke Barbara’s arm before resting her hands on the arms of the chair. “We thought the best thing was to have you all together and say it just once.”

Rebecca bit her lip before she spoke. “What we did was the right thing to do. We did it for Virgie. We did it for Elizabeth and Nolan. We did it for all of you.”

“We knew the only way to protect you was to keep the secret but now we feel it’s time to tell the truth.”

To John, when Audrey spoke, it looked as if she’d rehearsed her words a thousand times. “What truth?” he asked.

And Rebecca began. “Our dear friend Virgie was always so full of love and life and she loved without reason. Follow where your heart leads…that’s what she always said.”

You can go to http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/ and read the first chapter before you add Respectable Affair and its two preceding novels, or any of my other stories to your shopping cart.

Follow this link to my website http://annettesnyder.atspace.com/ and you’ll learn all about me, my work and why I find myself writing instead of cleaning house. There, you’ll also find a link to my innovative blog, Fifty Authors from Fifty States. Connect to that and discover other talented writing professionals and the parts of the USA that inspires them and again, please thank Linda for her support with this opportunity to connect with you.

Memories for Mother's Day

This Mother's Day as we turn our thoughts and memories toward the women who gave us life, I want to take a moment to remember my mom, Kay Rettstatt (Anna Catherine Hennessey Rettstatt).

During a recent visit with my sister, we got a glimpse of some old 8 mm family movies. (My paternal grandfather was something of a Cecil B. DeMille wanna be. No one was safe from his camera.) I say glimpse because the old projecter gave out. But we got to watch Mom at play--with a hula hoop, her hair pinned up in bobby pins. My Mom had a great sense of humor and fun. I like to think I inherited this from her. She was a stay-at-home Mom when that was the fashion, in the fifties and sixties. And she seemed to be content, though in the later sixties, she did take a part-time job, once my sister and I were both in high school. I think she enjoyed being out in the workforce for a bit and loved to tell stories about her day at the office.

She claimed to hate having animals in the house, but repeatedly took pity on stray dogs, luring them inside, bathing and feeding them, and--if no one claimed them--making them the new family pet.

She loved her family, playing cards and laughing with friends, dancing at Christmas time after her one singular drink (it only took one and, sadly, I inherited that, too). I remember the last birthday I spent with her. I went home for the day and took her out to visit family and then to dinner. She didn't want to go to any fancy restaurant, but chose a small, local bar and restaurant because they had great fried chicken strips. We had a nice day together--at that stage where mother and daughter begin to become equals, adult friends.

She was taken far too soon, just six weeks later, at the age of sixty-four.

Here's to you, Mom. I hope they have hula hoops in heaven. If not, I'm sure you're creating your own fun. You always did.

Linda