If you’ve seen my recent Facebook posts, you may already know this, but the above photo will grace the cover of my next novel. My dear uncle, Paul Filsinger, took it a few years ago, I know not where. Where he took it and why he took it don’t matter. All that matters is that he took it — because he’s not around to take anymore photos. He passed away at age 60 three years ago on October 1st.
This is how I visit him now:
He was more of a big brother to me than an uncle, and I loved him a lot. Naturally, I miss the hell out of him, and death anniversaries always make the pain more intense.
He was still alive when I published “State of Georgia . . . and Other Writings” in honor of my best friend, Amy, who passed away from cancer at the age of 50 on September 7, 2018, and I asked him then if I could use one of his photos on the cover of that book. He immediately sent me a recent photo and told me I was welcome to it.
After he passed away, I wanted to do whatever I could to keep his memory alive, and since he was a photographer, the best way to do that is by continuing to use his photographs whenever they fit. I found the perfect one among his photos for the cover of my thriller, “Twinges.”
So, this next book will be my sixth novel, and his photos will be on the covers of three of them. Looking ahead at some stories that are in progress, I’m not sure if I’ll find any photos of his for their covers, but I will certainly cull through them to see.
If you ever read “The Clearwater House,” this next novel is a little bit like that, but it involves motorcycles — if you couldn’t tell by the cover photo that I’m planning to use. Ha ha. I’m working on the final edits, and then I will begin working on all the things that need to be done before I release it to the public.
It’s title is “Her Ride or Die,” and it’s a mystery/suspense with a bit of paranormal just like “The Clearwater House” has. My beta readers enjoyed it, so I hope others will, too. If you haven’t yet read “The Clearwater House” or any of my other books, here’s a link to my website where you can learn more about each: my author website
Because I want to complete those final edits before sharing some of the book here with paying subscribers, I’m going to postpone that one more week — I hope it will only be one more week. If you’re a paying subscriber, you will get to read another news story that recently ran and that you might not have seen if you don’t subscribe to the Norfolk Daily News, and I will share my book column that ran on September 16th. These are located beyond the paywall below.
If you’re not yet a paying subscriber, please consider becoming one, and help me continue to write. Thanks.
Until next time. Wish me luck with completing my final edits and making the next book as good as I can make it.
Tammy Marshall
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