Please help me welcome Beth Cornelison, multi-published author. I have known her for years, and she always has something interesting to say. She is a prize winning author with more books due out SOON! 

Good morning Beth 

Setting the Scene for TRUST IN ME 

Thank you, Pink Fuzzy Slippers ladies, for the opportunity to set the scene of my small town contemporary romance, TRUST IN ME. First a story, then I'll tell you how you can get TRUST IN ME for FREE!

The summer after I finished sixth grade, my family moved from Missouri to Augusta, Georgia. One of the benefits of this move was that we were now four hours away from my grandmother, who lived in Asheville, North Carolina, instead of sixteen hours. My mom took advantage of the chance to visit her aging mother as often as possible, meaning my sisters and I also made the trip. I loved the opportunity to visit with my grandmother, but just as I have cherished memories of the time at my grandmother's house, I remember well the drive through rural South Carolina to reach Asheville.

In particular, I remember driving through Clinton, South Carolina, a picturesque small town and home of Presbyterian College. Clinton became my model of small town life and beauty when story ideas and characters for TRUST IN ME started whispering in my mind.

The tall ancient oaks lined the streets with branches that ached over the road to create a shady tunnel of greenery. The old homes, both large and small, harkened to a bygone age. The railroad tracks we bumped over at the center of town and small businesses that lined the main street barber shops, hardware stores and drug stores were reminders of the days before superstores and malls ruled the retail landscape. Home owners' well-tended lawns blossomed in summertime with a rainbow of flowers and blooming shrubs. I can remember rolling down my window just to catch a whiff of the floral scents that perfumed the air.

In a residential area of Clinton, we'd pass the lovely campus of Presbyterian College with its stately Georgian style brick buildings and shady quads, and I began forming ideas of the sort of college campus I wanted to call home when I graduated high school.

Not far from town, along the country highways that cris-crossed the state, peach orchards and vegetable gardens yielded crops that were sold in the numerous roadside stands. I have never eaten a sweeter, more delicious peach than the ones grown in western South Carolina.  Large pastures with cows idly grazing, farm houses and mobile homes with dogs sleeping in the sun added to the slow-paced, nostalgic feeling of this beautiful small town.

Time passed, and I married and moved away from Georgia. My grandmother grew ill and needed to be placed in a nursing home closer to my mom, and I was no longer making that trip from Georgia to North Carolina via Clinton, South Carolina. Yet when I started writing TRUST IN ME, Clinton was burned in my brain as the idyllic setting for my small town romance.

My hero, Kevin, worked in a family owned hardware store like the ones that lined Clinton's main street. Heroine Claire dreamed of attending Harrison University, based on Presbyterian College, and she rented a room from an elderly lady who lived in one of the old homes with a bounty of sweet smelling flowers and dogwood trees blooming in the yard. Kevin lived in one of the mobile homes outside the town limits and even had a stray mutt who adopted him. I also had the owner of one of those roadside peach stands came to shop at Lowery's Hardware.

Although I changed the name of the town so that I could take some creative license, the inspiration for my small town of Grayson came from those summertime trips up and down the highways between Georgia and North Carolina, and my fond memories of Clinton, South Carolina.

Would you like to visit Grayson? Now is the perfect time, because for a limited time TRUST IN ME is available for $.99!

AMAZON -- http://amzn.to/t2XHkr

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BARNES AND NOBLE -- http://bit.ly/vTCqv7

Beth Cornelison   bcornelison@comcast.net

TRUST IN ME- Amazon Kindle- http://amzn.to/t2XHkr

CHASING A DREAM- Now on Kindle! http://tinyurl.com/6snewon

SOLDIER’S PREGNANCY PROTOCOL- Black Ops Rescues Bk 1- June 2012

THE REUNION MISSION- Black Ops Rescues Bk 2- August 2012

COLTON’S RANCH REFUGE-  October 2012

www.bethcornelison.com

Ladies, Please ask Beth plenty of questions!  

Thanks, and happy reading, Beth C

When I last left the story I was wondering if air in the IV line would kill me. Well it won't, it has to be a very large amount of air. Little bubbles and air won't hurt you. Now the picture is my husband taking pictures. Yes I know you all are thinking, WHAT? Is she crazy? No just sick, as you can see I am reaching for the bucket. I thought about the frying pan again, but he was behaving so well. The man who never did a thing without cajoling, was worried and scared for me. He washed my back, my hair and gave me the bed bath the nurses never give anymore. I was shocked as he sat rubbing my head and I did my best not to smack him, because he meant well. Far be it from me to discourage him being there for me. Because I was so sick, it touched me.
But the camera, I wanted to hurt him. With some kind of stick or something.
I made the mistake of sending this picture to my cousin, who promptly put my head in a video that was annoying. I'll get her back some other time.
Anyways back to the hospital.
Finally after giving me other stuff that did nothing they gave me Compazine and some strong pain killer, morphine I think. It took away some of the pain and nausea. I was so grateful for the relief of feeling so bad. I slept for three days, not eating and only getting up to go to the bathroom. Dragging those IV things is a PIA. They only had to change my IV site once, but my veins were all hiding and it was a painful and long process which left me with golf ball sized lumps all over my arms. Finally they found one and it was back to sleep.
Now mind you Chris is back at the cabin. No TV, no computer, nothing. I think he learned to appreciate me on a new level this trip. He needs me. He can't make it without me. Hmmmmmm... There was a time that would thrill me, now I wanna puke even more. The man cannot take care of himself. But he is good when he has to be. So it's a toss up. Yes, he loves me too. He tells me so. No no flowers, but my dishwasher has been repaired oodles of times. And he does things in his own way.
They kept waking me up to give me medication and they were so nice. This brand new hospital had 23 beds of which two were now taken. Me and some poor old guy who screamed his head off all day and nite, I had to close my door he yelled so bad. Turns out he had what I had and was as most men are a whusses with pain. I wanted to scream but the worst I did was pant, rock and moan quietly. In hindsight I should have yelled. All the nurse said to me was to stop hyperventilating, him they helped just to shut him up. Hmmmmm...
Chris visited too much, yes that's what I said, too much. He was bored, hence the camera. He also had some need to keep a record of my sickness. I have no clue why. His smile for the picture comments made me more ill. I just wanted to sleep.
There were two very nice nurses who rolled me outside to see my love muffin doggie, Junior. He was so glad to see me, lots of dog kisses and hugs...
It seemed like forever and one day rolled into the next so that I didn't know the time or date sometimes. I didn't care either. They would bring me trays of chemical tasting jello, broth that tased like dishwater and a small can of sprite. Yuk! Never touched the stuff. Even today I am still on a very bland diet. Slowly I felt better, enough to leave and see my regular doctor. Looking forward to that, he never even remembers my name. I feel so safe with my MD, NOT. He is so darn busy he couldn't remember all of the patients he has. Some 3,000 he says. I have to tell him the same stuff every time I see him.
So time to go home! Or at least back to the cabin. The weather was still cold, which I normally relish. But being sick and weak I was extra cold and when we got to the cabin the electricity was out. Ouch! Cold and dark, thank God for the fire.
What else could go wrong. I never should have uttered those words.
I slept some more and watched the leaves as their beautiful myriad colors changed the landscape into a mystical place that I find the peace I always look for in. The reason I go to NC is because it's so wonderful. In the town of Bryson City you step back into the past. My favorite thing, loving time travel, is the past. It's so quiet and I am reminded of the beautiful pictures that my friend Beth Trissel posts of her home. There is just something so special about the mountains. There the past weaves tales that writers share with us. The future weaves itself.
While I was in the hospital and people called I was too tired to answer. Now my cell phone is not getting any reception!!! NOoooooo! My last link with family and friends is useless, unless we go to town. I knew I shouldn't have said those words. Was that it? Were my three touches with bad luck over. I'm not gonna go back and count just in case.
So tomorrow I go to the doctors to try and figure out what's wrong with me. Although I feel a lot better now.

Where I spent the rest of my vacation.

Yes I wanted to go walk in the woods and commune with nature, yes I wanted to see the sights in Cherokee and go to the shops, buy some fudge, take a picture with an Indian Chief. You know with one of the guys who looks like the real thing but when he talks he's from Brooklyn. But my time over and we had to go home till next year. So I am hoping for better luck on our next trip to North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Mystical as it looks, really!

The nurses were very nice they all said goodbye. They had a bunch of people sick with this bacterial virus. No one gave me a clue how I got it. But I want you all to know I have a new feeling of empathy for those who have stomach problems. The poor people on chemotheraphy, I just can't tell you how awful a hurting stomach and nausea can be. It's relentless. You can't think because you are too sick too. So I send this blog out to all of those of you who have ever had a stomach virus of any kind. God bless you and may it never happen again. Give my a buckeye, break out the crystals, whatever it takes. I never want to feel like that again, no way, ever!

Now lastly I would like to say this. It was about three days ago that my DH was walking through the house naked. Now he ain't bad for his age. I recalled him wiping my forehead with a damp cloth, washing my back and hair and something came over me. Suddenly! I kinda started to look at him like I did when we were twenty. Gosh he was hot. And then he walked up to me, turned and farted in my direction.

What the hell was I thinking.

My advise to all of you!

The following is taken from a letter my environmentally minded mom wrote to 'Living on Earth,' the program that comes on our local public radio on Sunday afternoons. She said: "In looking over the offerings of this week's show, I thought how extremely depressing almost all environmental news is and has been in recent years. Any topic you look at, is depressing. Those of us who are trying to do something lose heart and those who feel they can't do anything significant anyway, don't even bother to try. We seem doomed either way."

They sent me an email saying they'd been musing over this letter and wanted to read it on the air and have me reply to it, which, in fact, happened. In the time since I'd written the letter, however, I'd been to our denomination's conference center in Montreat, NC, to an environmental conference, where I had visited Warren-Wilson College and become so excited about what they're doing there, I had written a letter to Michelle Obama asking her to visit and spread the word. I told her about the new "eco" dorm they had built, including an article from the New York Times:

"Next fall, [2002] Warren Wilson College will open an 'EcoDorm' on its Asheville, N.C., campus. The residence hall is built almost entirely with reusable and recycled materials, such as wooden farm fences that were turned into siding. Solar fuel cells will convert sunlight into electricity and heat. Runoff from the roof, funneled through a converted 10,000-gallon railroad tank car, will provide water to the building and grounds. The dorm will also feature composting toilets and waterless urinals. Best of all for students hit with sudden hunger pangs, all the property's shrubs and other plants will be edible."

Additionally, we visited their gardens which include a gigantic composter, purchased second hand from a local penitentiary. (Seems the officials at the pen decided they would compost their scrap food to cut down on trips by inmates outside their gates.) Warren Wilson composts all the food from its dining hall. We saw it steaming away as it did its work. The compost then is moved to a large pile where it is finished, and then is spread on gardens all over the grounds. Healthy soil makes healthy plants which are better able to protect themselves from predators. Those who work in the gardens also practice companion planting, crop rotation, double dug beds, and use computers to plan their gardens for optimal production.

For years I have thought how terrible the food waste is from our schools, hospitals, retirement homes and other establishments in this country. If we could only go the compost route, it could be sold or distributed to local gardens instead of going to landfills.

One more point made by one of our speakers was to look at the website [StoryofStuff.com]. For some weird reason the writer visits landfills all over this country and others. She notes that "...we (Americans) are humongous waste makers...Nationally, we generate over 250 million tons of garbage each year, and that is only the municipal waste - or garbage - which doesn't even include the much larger amounts of waste from industries, mining, and construction. We make enough garbage each year in the U. S. to fill a convoy of 10-ton trucks long enough to wrap around the earth six times!"
It's too depressing to think about more than the one piece we can do. Try not to be discouraged, just do what we can.

Pat Churchman

*Pics are of EcoDorms at Warren-Wilson College.
The little cutie eating a tomato is one I added because I believe children greatly benefit from being part of the family garden.

Post Contributed by Beth Trissel, an avid gardener as well as a writer. I come from a long line of gardeners.