A warm welcome to the next author in our Grl featured blogger tour, Pat henshaw.
Pat talked about research and her published books. She also shares a brand new exclusive excerpt for her upcoming release part 3 of the Foothills Pride series!!
Welcome Pat 🙂
I’m always amazed at the amount of research I do for my books that doesn’t translate into more than a few words of text or sometimes no mention at all in the the fictional gay romance I’m writing.
Take, for example, the first book in the Foothills Pride series, What’s in a Name? My husband and I had joined a photo group and the week’s assignment was to take pictures of someone performing his/her job. I was watching the baristas in the café where we eat lunch and decided taking a photo of one of them would be fun. After we talked a little about coffee and I sat down to write, Jimmy, the barista in Name, almost wrote his own story. I’d watched one at work, read up on the process, watched videos, and understood it as an art as well as a passion. But in the book, readers never see Jimmy actually making a cup of coffee.
In Redesigning Max, Fredi came out of the womb a fashionista, so I visited a bunch of websites of men’s fashion shows. What would Fredi wear? My favorite photo was of a guy in a teal suit with a bright red shirt which appear once in the first scene of the book. Who would be attracted to someone who dressed like this? Only someone who appreciated the colors of the outdoors, of course. And Max was born. Roger Tory Peterson and I became good friends while I was researching Max’s passions, but actual birdwatching while mentioned doesn’t occur in the book.
In Behr Facts, I realized even though I listened to what the brothers who remodeled our house had to say about growing up in the construction business, I probably had to know how to frame a wall if I really wanted to get into the mindset of a commercial builder. So I turned to the Net where I watched YouTube video after video talking me through framing. And since Abe was an avid fisherman, I also read and looked at books on Northern California fishing. Unlike research for the previous books, both framing and fishing are more prominent in Behr Facts.
So while writing fiction is a lot of making up stories, for me, it’s also a lot of background research as I get into the minds and hearts of my viewpoint characters.
Blurb:
Barista Jimmy Patterson thinks it’s a good idea to get rip-roaring drunk on his birthday after he’s dumped by his boyfriend. When the burly owner of Stonewall’s Saloon rescues Jimmy, the night starts to look up.
Now Jimmy just wants to know the bartender’s first name since he’s worn a different name tag every time Jimmy’s seen him. “Guy” Stone gives Jimmy seven guesses, one for each night he takes Jimmy out on a date.
While Jimmy’s trying to come up with his name, he’s distracted by the destruction of his coffee shop and what looks more and more like a hate crime.
Buy links What’s In a Name
Blurb:
Renowned interior designer Fredi Zimmer is surprised when outdoorsman Max Greene, owner of Greene’s Hunting and Fishing, hires him to remodel his rustic cabin in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Fredi is an out and proud Metro male whose contact with the outdoors is from his car to the doorway of the million-dollar homes’ he remodels, and Max is just too hunky gorgeous for words.
When Max starts coming on to Fredi, the designer can’t imagine why. But he’s game to put a little spice into Max’s life, even if it’s just in the colors and fixtures he’ll use to turn Max’s dilapidated rustic cabin into a showplace. Who can blame a guy for adding a little sensual pleasure as he retools Max’s life visually?
Max, for his part, is grateful when Fredi takes him in hand, both metaphorically and literally. Coming out, he finds is the most exciting and wonderful time of his life, despite the conservative former friends who want to stop his slide into hell.
Buy Links Redesigning Max
Question from Jeff Adams:
Pat, what happens if the gang from the Foothills Pride series were to show up at GRL?”
Pat’s Answer:
Wow! I think it would be great fun. First of all, barista Jimmy from What’s in a Name? would have a special coffee for everyone—something that only he would think up and would take authors and characters by surprise. Then bar owner Guy, Jimmy’s partner, might take over the happy hour, regaling all of us with tales from the Stonewall Saloon and his wide variety of customers in Stone Acres, California.
Before we all got comfortably drunk, flamboyant Fredi Zimmer of Redesigning Max would make his grand entrance, wearing God only knows what. Once Fredi arrived, with his outdoorsman husband Max, getting another word in edgewise would be difficult. If you’re nice to him, though, he’ll pull out Boner and tell you about his grandfather, which is always a treat. I’m really not sure if Max will say much of anything, but if you’re into the California wilderness, it’d be well worth your time to talk to him.
Fredi might be the most colorful person in eyesight, but six foot six contractor Abe Behr from Behr Facts and tall, lanky CFO Jeff Mason will dominate the room with their sheer presence. Abe probably won’t say much and let Jeff speak for the both of them. Abe will eat his way through all the desserts offered, though.
Fortunately, with celebrity chef Adam de Leon from When Adam Fell and his partner David present, there will be more food than anyone can stuff down. And it won’t be standard cocktail fare either. Knowing Adam he’ll bring along his oven-baked sweet potato chips and his signature mesquite infused green tomato salsa for noshing as well as tray after tray of sweets. So stay out of Abe’s way when he gets a whiff of the chocolate and cream and sugar.
Pat Henshaw’s Question to Carter Quinn:
You and I have lived a lot of the same places. How do you think the Midwest and now Colorado have shaped you as an author?
Pat Henshaw, author of the Foothills Pride Stories, was born and raised in Nebraska and promptly left the cold and snow after college, living at various times in Texas, Colorado, Northern Virginia, and Northern California. Pat has found joy in visiting Mexico, Canada, Europe, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Egypt, and relishes trips to Rome, Italy, and Eugene, Oregon, to see family.
Now retired, Pat spent her life surrounded by words: Teaching English composition at the junior college level; writing book reviews for newspapers, magazines, and websites; helping students find information as a librarian; and promoting PBS television programs.
Excerpt from Behr Facts (releasing in late October 2015)
Abe Behr and Jeff Mason are having dinner at the Rock Bottom Cafe and Abe discovers Jeff owns the land next to his fishing cabin:
“You ever come up the bank to sit under my tree? Looks like a much more comfortable place to fish. Not as rocky at any rate.” Jeff took a drink of his beer as I again scrambled to keep up. “My dad called it the Fishing Tree. He seemed to think fish congregated off the shore there.”
We sat in silence. It was my turn to talk. I’m pretty good in business situations. Not so much in social ones. At social events, mostly I hold up walls. Shake hands. Grunt a lot. Let others carry the conversational load.
Lorraine set our meals in front of us. The full burger with everything for him. The grilled mountain trout and steamed vegetables for me.
“You do a lot of fishing?” I managed after a long silence.
“Not really.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “My dad said fishing couldn’t be taught. He said it was something intuitive. I never had any idea what I was doing. So I never saw any use in fishing. I never saw any fish either.”
Again, silence as I processed and caught up. “It’s not rocket science. You figure out what kind of fish you want. Where it lives. Lure it to you. Then catch it.”
He looked skeptical and almost self-conscious. “It can’t be so easy,” he said with a little laugh.
“Why not?”
“What about the different rods, lures, tackle, stuff?” He looked so serious, as if I were missing the point. As if I didn’t understand. He was right. I didn’t.
“Look. You can catch fish with your bare hands. If you want to. The extra stuff is just extra stuff.”
“If you say so.” He shook his head, a smile still on his lips. “Have you ever caught a fish with your bare hands?”
I lifted my hands and looked down at the mess that were my paws. Calluses, nicks, cuts, punctures, blunt fingers, the bandage now off the one with the splinter. These were the hands of a man who’d framed houses as a tall, rangy preteen and had lived in construction ever since. Could I catch a fish with my bare hands?
“Yeah. All it takes is absolute stillness and patience.” I sighed. “Not a whole lot of people have both together. Somebody once told me it’s all about Zen.” Somebody else said the only reason I could do it was because I was too stupid to know it was impossible.
“Zen.” His tone said he was surprised I knew such a word.
“You know, like the Eastern religion,” I answered. “Though why we still call it Eastern is beyond me. It’s really Far West, not Far East to us.” I was grumbling and rambling. Avoiding for some reason.
He rattled me. Nobody ever rattled me. I’m Abe Behr, the big Behr.
He was studying me as intently as I was him. He appeared too beautiful, too perfect, too unscarred. I just hoped his accountant skills were as perfect as he looked.
“What kind of fish you want to catch?” I asked. Staring at him wasted our time.
He pointed his fork to my plate. “How about that? It’s good, right?”
“Trout,” I agreed. “Lots of different kinds of trout.”
He looked like he’d never eaten any in his life.
“This is trout from our lake. Have a bite.”
He’d finished his burger but didn’t make a move on my fish. His expression was split between wanting to dig in and reluctance to do so.
“Just taste it,” I growled. “It won’t bite.”
His eyes snapped up to meet mine. His puzzled stare asked if the stupid bear had deliberately made a joke or not. Then he gave a happy, hearty laugh, and his fork raided my fish.
“So? What do you think?” I asked after he swallowed.
“I think you made a great joke,” he said with twinkling eyes. “And the trout is delicious. Is this why you threw your catch back? Did you know you’d get it cooked perfectly here at the cafe?”
“Naw. I was stalking the pie. Fish was a bonus.”
“They have good pie here?”
“Wait and see.”
Hi Pat, I have What’s in a Name in my tbr and by the sounds of them, the other two will be bought soon! fredi sounds a riot