Category Archives: Novel

Ryder Rides On

Great Read, Novel, Writers Life, ,

Ryder Syvertsen cover imageMemorial Day is for remembering and on Saturday we remembered an author friend of ours – Ryder Syvertsen who wrote most of his books as Ryder Stacy.

We gathered at a Brooklyn Heights brownstone church in the reception area quaintly referred to as the undercroft. Ryder would have had a witty wisecrack to make about that word. Possibly something to do with the region of the afterlife he expected to inhabit. Ryder was a witty guy. Smart and verbal so his humor was always crackling and on point with a cynical edge that managed to be free of malice – at least of the personal kind.

I can’t imagine Ryder in a church but I can imagine him in Brooklyn where he spent some of his best years. I can imagine him in other contexts too because he was four months older than I am. We grew up in the same times. Though he lived his most formative teen years in Greenwich Village while I was in Northern New York – in a town much like Riverton in the series I’m writing – wishing I could get to Greenwich Village.

Ryder wrote series too. His best known as Ryder Stacy is The Doomsday Warrior Series. Survivalist Science Fiction “set in a Ruined Earth America” his obit says. Ryder died on February 28th after a protracted illness. He wasn’t well enough long enough to catch the indie publishing wave now roaring like a tsunami through the book world. But I can imagine him here with us. Ranting for out with the old and in with the new. And letting his freak flag fly.

Ryder did have a freak flay and a party-down soul too. I knew him mostly from writers’ group parties where he claimed to come because they were “the cheapest drunk in town.” I always understood that he was really there – as we all were – to be among our tribe. The tribe of storytellers that began when language began around campfires where we told our tales in exchange for a shank of whatever might be roasting in the flames.

Ryder wrote in that longstanding noble tradition. So do I. So very possibly do you. Sometimes supper isn’t easy to come by. Ryder struggled with wife Paige Lewis through some lean years. Many of us can identify with that. Ryder isn’t struggling any more. But his tales are still being told. Search for Ryder Stacy or Ryder Syvertsen on amazon.com and you’ll find his stories there.

Buy a book or several. I believe that’s the memorial Ryder would love best. Maybe he’s loving it right now from the place of wild imagining and raucous parties and writing tribe companions where he is bound to be.

RR

 My own latest story is A WRONG WAY HOME – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #1 – Matt & Kara’s Story. Available at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 12th novel and Ryder would definitely want me to be telling you about it here as I tell you about him.  Alice Orr –

 

Home Is Where the Heart Is – Riverton Road Monday

Great Read, Kindle Bargain, Novel,

Riverton Road SeriesIn my adult life I’ve done a lot of what the English refer to as “moving house”. I can’t blame my birth family for my restless spirit and its long-time quest for something new wherever I happen to be. They lived in the same house from the time I was six months old until I left for college. Once the possibility of selling our gray-shingled bungalow was simply mentioned and I cried my eyes out for days.

What is Home anyway? We talk a lot about it. We’re forever searching for one or running away from one or missing one so much we’re stricken with Homesickness. All of which is pretty intense. We’re never lukewarm about home. We either burn to be there or yearn to get away. Anywhere that falls short of that kind of passion for us is just a resting spot. A temporary stopping-off point on the road to our heart’s true destination.

That’s part of what fascinates me about Mark Kalli and Hailey Lambert in A Year of Summer Shadows. They are and always have been Home in terms of the town they live in at least. The town of Riverton, New York. Mark was born and raised on Riverton Road at Kalli Corner in the same homestead with only a few years away for college. But in this story – his story and Hailey’s – Mark finds his own restlessness. To find his own new heart place near Kalli Corner and Riverton but separate from it too.

Hailey’s relationship to home has a more complicated past. As a child home was two places. Her family’s place and her friend Julia’s more stately Hargate House until that went sour.  Her father died soon afterward and her mother lost her bearings. Hailey didn’t feel at home again until she returned to Riverton after her own college years. She’s lived by herself ever since and would be content to go on doing so if not for the confusion Mark Kalli has become and the danger Julia’s reappearance brings.

What remains constant about Home for Mark and Hailey is their love of Riverton. I love Riverton too. The details of this town aren’t just the specifics of Mark and Hailey’s heart place. They’re the specifics of the heart place of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series.  Riverton, New York isn’t only where the stories happen. It is another character in the stories themselves. Riverton’s as real to me as the people who live there and the struggles they go through. And Riverton grows more real with each story of this good town where bad things can and do happen.

Riverton is more than the home of Mark and Hailey and all the rest. It’s the heart of this series because we grow to care more about the place as we travel through each struggle and adventure that erupts there. As we care more the place becomes more real to us. Until – at least in our imaginations – Riverton evolves into a town we can also call Home. I know that’s true for me. After a lot of moving house – when I roam through the streets and mysteries of Riverton I’m Home.

 RR

 My next story is A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story. Available May 15th at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 13th novel and a home for your heart as well as mine.

 Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

 

 

Can We Go Home Again? – Riverton Road Monday

Great Read, Kindle Bargain, Novel,

High School ReunionEvery story is a conversation with myself as the author and myself as a person. I usually don’t recognize what that conversation is about until I’m at least halfway through the writing. Or maybe not until after I’ve typed The End.

In A Wrong Way Home I knew all along that Kara’s dilemma has been my dilemma for decades. Can we go home again? Can we return to the place that birthed us and nurtured us? Or – as is the case with Kara – the place that failed to nurture us.

The answer is more difficult when we’ve had a hometown experience like Kara’s – the non-nurturing kind and the hurtful memories that go with it. For Kara those deep dark memory pits have to do with two things – her family and her past relationships with men. She doesn’t want to fall into either of these pits again.

Yet she can’t seem to stay away from one of those men even though she knows for sure that seeing him again will mean heartache for her. Matt Kalli is like the sore tooth we can’t keep from flicking with our tongue. Maybe we do that to make certain the pain is still there.

Isn’t that true of most of us when – for example – we can’t stop ourselves from signing up for the high school reunion. We shop long and hard for the perfect outfits to display ourselves at our best advantage. We have our hair styled. We struggle to lose weight. At my age we wish we could afford a facelift.

We’ve got unfinished business back there. Battlefields we didn’t conquer the first time around. The mean girls. The lost boys. The warm friendships that went cold. We long to write an alternate ending to those stories.

“Look at me,” we’d like to say. “See how special I am now. Don’t you wish you’d been nicer to me back then? Sorry. You’re too late to make up for it now.”

That’s the best case scenario. What will the real scenario be? We can’t resist finding out. We can’t keep our tongues off that nagging sore tooth memory. So we clean up as pretty as we can get and trek back home again.

I’ve gone to two high school reunions. One was a disappointment – no closure to be found. The second was very different. Why? Because I stayed away from the mean girls and boys I’d lost and the bad friends. I hung with the folks who’d been my true besties and I had a marvelous time. I also took my husband. He cleans up nice too.

Like Kara I found out that we can go home again. We just have to choose our stopping points wisely. We have to do that choosing with our warm hearts instead of our broken ones.

RR

 My latest story is A WRONG WAY HOME – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #1 – Matt & Kara’s Story. Available at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 12th novel and it’s all about going home again.

 Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com