Bell Bridge Books

“I found my true being…”

by Augusta Trobaugh

I have always believed that Southern writing is character-driven, rather than being plot-driven. So in this story, I brought together characters (folks!) who were all from different generations, social positions, and race.

I have so much fun watching as these characters drift into each others’ lives and begin interacting with each other in a most completely authentic manner.  At that time, I become an “observer,” rather than a “writer,” because at some time or other in a story, the characters simply take over, and I am left to chuckle at them or to weep for them.

Also, when I was growing up in rural Jefferson County, Georgia, I became fascinated by the many creeks in the area.  In particular, I remember being delighted when, riding in the car with my mother, we crossed the bridge over Boggy Gut Creek.  As a child, I pronounced it “boogie goot,” but my mother corrected me, and I was even more delighted by the real name.

I grew up in Stellaville, Georgia (population 82), and right down at the bottom of the hill  from my home was Brier Creek, where I watched salamanders and minnows and also the antics of several otters.

When the character of Pansy Jordan came to mind, I was impressed by her intention to do as she believed the Lord Jesus Christ had bade her to do: “Get yourself washed clean in the River Jordan.” Such was her strong intent that she changed her name from “Pansy” to “River.”  But when she finally came to realize exactly how far away the real River Jordan was, she consented to be baptized in Jordan Creek.  In that way, my love of Georgia’s numerous creeks was satisfied.

I had a truly blessed childhood, roaming free (usually on horseback) through the rural areas.  I found my true BEING in all of nature – especially the forests and creeks.

Find your true being with RIVER JORDAN – a March Monthly 100 for only $1.99!

“A Sort of Homecoming for Me”

by Virginia Brown

I have a confession: I am an avid Anglophile. Since I was a small child, I have loved any and everything I could read, see at the movies, or watch on TV about the British Isles. Until recently, I never understood quite why I have always been so fascinated with anything English. A few years ago I began to research our family genealogy, and at last I understand. My mother’s ancestors came from England and Ireland, half of my father’s from Wales and Scotland. On my mother’s side I was able to trace our lineage back to Waleran de Gyrlington, born in 1058. He married a local Yorkshire girl, and happily set about creating a long line of descendants. Perhaps that is why, upon my first visit to England, I actually wept with emotion at setting down on the runway of Gatwick Airport. It was a sort of homecoming for me.

In researching background for NEVER TEMPT A DUKE, I chose Hampshire, a beautiful location on the southern coast with a rich history and gorgeous homes. I shamelessly borrowed from other country manors, castles, and villages to create my hero’s home and lineage. While the surrounding hills and vales are as accurate as I can describe them, the house itself is a composite of other impressive homes scattered over the English countryside. It was easy for me to imagine the Duke of Deverell in such a setting, and even easier to imagine a young American girl’s awe at finding herself living in Deverell Hall as his ward. Of course, Alyssa’s arrival was fraught with anxiety since she was pretending to be her twin brother, a deception that Blake Crandell, Duke of Deverell would certainly not appreciate. But what else could she do when faced with the alternative of languishing in a female academy at home in Virginia? Her twin, Nicky, had inherited an earldom through their father, but Alyssa’s future was uncertain. Since the duke had been made guardian, he had control over their lives until they reached the age of twenty-one. Nicky chose to go to sea, and Alyssa embarked on a deception that would change her life forever. As an American in an unfamiliar land with unfamiliar customs, she had much to learn, and never expected to fall in love with the duke. Nor had the duke any expectations of love, especially with someone he’d watched grow from a rebellious girl into a beautiful young woman. Deverell had few illusions, having been disappointed in love before, and had vowed to never allow himself to be tempted into such dangerous emotion again.

But he hadn’t anticipated the power of Alyssa’s desire or his own response. . . .

NEVER TEMPT A DUKE is an Amazon Monthly 100 for March for only $1.99! Grab it today!

Writing About Friendship

by Melissa Ford

Writers are supposed to write about what they know, right?  And what do we know better than our friendships?  There were the friendships our parents set up for us; the children of their friends that we were expected to share our toys with simply because our parents wanted to hang out.  (Yes, I am guilty of passing along this fine tradition to my own children.)

There were the first friendships we formed on our own on the playground.  The friends that broke our heart or didn’t return our affection or were too clingy.  The ones that dumped us.  The ones we drifted away from.  The ones that saved our lives.  The ones that we whispered our secrets to in the dark during a sleepover.

There are the old friends that we’ve been together with for more years than we haven’t been friends, and the new friends that we’ve intensely connected with in the last year or two.

See?  As a subject, it’s pretty ripe for the write-what-you-know rule.

But being close to the subject is tricky.  No one wants to see themselves show up on the page, and it’s bad form to dissect your friendships in front of an audience.  Sometimes we can’t really explain why we’re friends with someone, or why we’re not.  We may not know what we did right or what went wrong.

Sometimes friendships defy words, though I never stop trying to write about the topic.

Life from Scratch is about a woman named Rachel finding herself after the dissolution of a marriage.  She finds her voice through the act of writing but also seeing what she wants reflected in her relationship with her best friend, Arianna.  Where do we first learn how we want to be loved? Our friendships.  And it’s where we constantly return to measure our relationships.

LIFE FROM SCRATCH is Amazon’s monthly deal for March for only $1.99.  Read it with a friend and discuss it over coffee.  Don’t forget to tell your friend how you could never get by without her.

“The Initial Blooming of My Imagination”

by Augusta Trobaugh

During my childhood, a “Swan Place” actually existed. It was a two-storied, unpainted house in Jefferson County, Georgia, set well back from the unpaved road, beyond a cotton field, and protected from road and field dust by many Sassafras and Crepe Myrtle trees.

My great-grandparents, Eliza Ann Narcissus Aldred Connell and Nathan Jerome Connell, lived in that large old house and provided stagecoach drivers, passengers, and horses a haven where they could eat, be refreshed, and spend the night.  The entire second floor was divided into two large bedrooms – one for gentlemen and one for ladies.  From what I have learned, this original “Swan Place” was selected as a rest stop for the stagecoach that ran from Savannah to Augusta.

Because I grew up during an era when children could safely wander around (especially in completely rural areas), I often went to that deserted old house, riding my horse there from my own home about half a mile away.  I had not personally known either of my great-grandparents, but I always felt something of their lives when I was there.  I could imagine my great-grandmother cooking in the detached kitchen (well away from the main house, in fear of kitchen stove fire) – the kitchen sort of a separate little cabin resting on logs and equipped with large iron latches, to which mules could be hitched to pull a burning kitchen well away from the house itself.

In that old house, I dreamed my dreams, inserting my great-grandparents into a story that I made up.

Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the initial blooming of my imagination.

When I wrote “Swan Place,” I created a much grander home than the old, unpainted house of my childhood, but the feeling of sanctuary was the same,  as was the fanciful thinking I had done there.

It’s a treasured memory!

SWAN PLACE is a March Monthly 100 for only $1.99! Get it today!

Researchaholic

by Eve Gaddy




I love research. There’s nothing I like better when starting a book than to be able to do research. I love going to the library and finding books and articles on the subject I’m researching. I love being able to google the subject and have all kinds of books and articles show up in my browser. I make a research file for each book in my browser favorites and keep all the links in it. I also keep a file for print articles and I have both ebooks and paper books for research. I keep all my research for every book I’ve written. That way if I need to know something about jewel thieves, or Texas Rangers, or cops, or cold cases, or Hotshots, or any number of things I’ve researched in the past, I don’t have to start from zero. 



A really interesting thing happened just as I was starting to do research for Cry Love. I decided that even though I’d never heard of one, that it would have been logical for there to have been another Underground Railroad, but this one running from Texas to Mexico. After all, Mexico is a lot closer to Texas than Canada. Imagine my surprise when I found that my idea happened to be true.

First, I googled Texas-Mexico Underground Railroad to see if it had existed. I found a number of articles that referred to it, some with just a mention and some with more information. Information was scarce on the subject. There isn’t a lot written about it, or at least, a lot that is accessible. Most people don’t even know the Texas-Mexico Underground Railroad existed. I’ve read that much that’s written about it is in Spanish, but even in Mexico the stories about it aren’t well known. 



The kernel of an idea I started with was that of a black man and a white woman who fell in love just prior to the Civil War. The man was a slave. Again, I didn’t know much about the subject, but people fall in love all the time, so it didn’t seem impossible for such a situation to have taken place. One of the books I found fascinating is Forbidden Fruit–Love Stories From the Underground Railroad, by Betty Deramus. One section that particularly interested me was about interracial love stories from the Civil War era. The stories were touching and emotional and often tragic. 

Although I still research some of the medical references and situations and such, I do have my own personal go-to medical sources. My husband, Bob, is a retired physician who was a General Surgeon and Radiologist. He loves it when I ask him things. 

Me: “I need something really exciting to happen in the ER.” I go on to explain the circumstances, what I’m trying to accomplish, etc. 

Bob: “You don’t want the ER to be exciting. Things aren’t going well if they’re exciting.” 
Me: “Yes, yes, I know that. (He’s told me this before. Many times.) But tell me what could happen that requires both a trauma surgeon and a neurosurgeon. Something they might argue about.”
Bob: Sighs heavily. “Well, this could happen…”
Me: “No.”
Bob: “Or this…”
Me: “No.”
Bob: Audibly grinding teeth. “How many scenarios do you want?”
Me: “I want one that’s exciting.”

We go on like that for a while until I finally hear something that might work. Then, of course, I have to pick his brains about how to write the scene and finally, I ask him to read over it to make sure it doesn’t sound stupid or that I haven’t gotten something wrong. I’m fairly certain at times like that he wishes he wasn’t a retired physician. My daughter is a Physician’s Assistant so I have another source for answers to medical questions. I think she likes being asked. So far.:)

I also had to do some research about divorce in Texas. I warned my husband in case he came upon me reading about divorce and thought I was planning something. I don’t think he was worried. I’m pretty sure I’ve asked him questions about that as well. I’ve been a writer for a long time now, so he’s accustomed to being asked about all sorts of subjects–both those he knows about and those he doesn’t.

There are a number of groups for writers that are wonderful for doing research. An excellent one is the Yahoo groups Crime Scene Writers group, started by Wally Lind, a retired police crime scene investigator. The description from the Yahoo groups site reads: “A forum for asking and answering crime scene investigation, applied forensics, and police procedure questions for fiction or non-fiction writers. Writers are invited to ask and crime scene investigators, forensic scientists, and medical practitioners are invited to answer.”

As with a lot of things, research has changed markedly with the Internet. It can make a writer’s life both easier and harder. Easier to find books, articles and other resources to find answers to questions. Harder because it’s common to get distracted by every article you read and keep clicking on different articles until suddenly you are reading an article that has absolutely no relation to whatever you were researching. Worse, two hours have passed and you still haven’t found the answer to your question.

But you never know when you might need an article on Wolf Moon name variations.