Real Life Fearless by Colleen L. Donnelly #FearlessFriday #romance

FEARLESS FRIDAY

My guest today, Colleen L. Donnelly, knows how to entertain us. I'm voting her the most fearless this year to date on Discover... And because she is such a good tale spinner, you'll want to check out her fiction books too. So read to the end and then check out her books! 

Fearless? Maybe not, but when Kenny Rogers sang “The Gambler,” I heard my escapes from harm crooned to a catchy tune. My dad had already dubbed Kenny a herald of truth when “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille” coincided with a bout of bad blood sugar that weakened my mom, his best farmhand. But Kenny’s insight didn’t dawn on me until long after endless replays of his Greatest Hits during high school study hall. Much later his words brought my brushes with disaster to light through The Gambler’s eyes. 

“Son, I've made a life
Out of readin' people's faces
Knowing what the cards were
By the way they held their eyes”

Targeted

The face I read outside my closed car window told me what cards that man held. Cajoling and sincere, he assured me under meager streetlights that the person I said I was looking for was just around the corner. “Leave your car, and follow me,” he coaxed from outside my locked car. Then his pleas shifted from “Trust me” to “Roll down your window so I can hear you better.” The way he held his eyes told me to start my car. When “No, don’t go” darkened his face, I hit the gas. 

“Every gambler knows
That the secret to surviving
Is knowing what to throw away
Knowing what to keep”

Which goes for advice. Like that given to me in a Burger King parking lot by a man who pointed to my rear tire before I exited my car, advising, “You should see your tire. It’s flat.” When I hesitated, he persisted, “Don’t drive with it that way.” Since I had just driven there without the flapping limp of a flat, I challenged him. Which brought him closer. “Get out and look at it,” he insisted. “See for yourself.” His persistence piqued the Gambler’s “secret to surviving.” Throw away lunch? A tire? I threw away the fellow’s advice, knowing what to keep. Me. So I left—on four solid tires. 

“The night got deathly quiet
And his face lost all expression”

Make that a deathly quiet alley. And two faces. Two that went from cocky assurance to shock when I wheeled my ninety-month pregnant body around and faced them. They’d trailed me as I waddled from a local grocer to my house. I felt them before I heard them, footsteps then voices that donned a casual pretense designed to keep my defenses asleep. They drew closer. Their pace quickened. I couldn’t run, had nothing to defend myself with, so I turned. If innocent, they would smile and step aside. But their pretend joviality and conversation vanished. They stood expressionless as their pregnant victim suddenly barreled straight toward them, through their deathly quiet, and then away. 

“If you're gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right”

Wrong place, wrong time

Which means truthfully. Someone wanted something I had. When threats and coercion failed to get it from me, they took me to court. To the judge, they spun a yarn that painted them a victim and me a scoundrel. I pondered an equally fabricated defense until the judge turned my way. King Solomon shone in his eyes, the same brilliance that had ages ago resolved the squabble as to which of two women an infant belonged to by decreeing the baby be cut in half. The judge raised a question the way Solomon lifted his sword. He was looking for the truth—the real mother who would give up her child in order to save its life. I played it right and told him the truth. His gavel hit the podium. And what was mine remained mine. 

“You got to know when to hold ’em”

Rumor had it that the man who backed into our parked car, but accused us of hitting his, was tied to organized crime. Cool, calm, and collected, he swaggered into the courtroom, hands stuffed in the pockets of a long trench coat, and stood beside us in front of a judge. The rumor seemed true when the judge entertained only one side of the story…not ours…then dismissed the case. While my co-witness screamed, “Liar,” I watched the back of the trench coat swagger out the doors he’d entered. She screamed it again in the hallway, utterly fearless while I considered the enormity of what…not who…had dinged the car. Wisdom said, “Hold ’em,” and I did. But she didn’t. Until that enormity turned and delivered her a promise we knew he would keep. 

“Know when to fold ’em”

Is it fearless to climb into the basket of a hot air balloon when you’re terrified of heights? Or was I more afraid of the people who clapped my back and said, “You can do it, come on.” My wits that had kept me safe through countless other scrapes, failed me the moment pride took over. More cowardly than wise, I knew I should have folded before I stepped into the basket, or before I even accepted, or by pretending to be sick. But when the gas failed to ignite and lift the balloon into the air, it was time. I folded. And kissed the ground I belonged on. 

“Know when to walk away”

Bullies. Two giants decided to tail my daughter and I in the mall. Enormous shadows darkened wherever we walked. Taunts and snickers bristled the air. Chortles and insults tempted me to turn and retaliate, but I took her hand and kept moving forward. The more they picked on a mother and child, the smaller they became. So small, even their sticks and stones fell flat. I understood then what my mother always said—insecure people try to bring you down to their level. Low and small. My daughter and I became the giants then, and we walked away. 

“And know when to run”

Approaching a gate after dark to an outdoor testing site that I and other lab techs worked, my car became besieged by Spanish-speaking men, roused from singing around their campfire. They grinned as they surrounded the car of a dazed blonde who quickly locked her doors. To their too happy expressions, I offered smiles, exaggerated gestures, pressed my ID to the glass, and tried a simple English explanation to encourage them to move away. I even claimed I had a husband—a grande husband—in broken Spanish, but nothing budged them. Preferring not to drag them with my car, I pondered employing the 21 Foot Rule and demand they step outside my vulnerable distance. Then the smile pressed against my window vanished. A large hand clapped the man’s shoulder and pulled him from my car. His friends moved also when our heftiest lab tech didn’t let go. His nod said what I already knew—this is when I run. 

Colleen L. Donnelly is an Amazon #1 Bestselling author of historical fiction and romance. She can be found at:

http://www.colleenldonnelly.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ColleenLDonnelly

http://www.Goodreads.com/colleenldonnelly

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/colleen-l-donnelly

http://amzn.to/37vcnO4

https://twitter.com/ColleenLDonnell/ 

And her books:

Mine to Tell     http://amzn.to/1PNJo4S

Asked For        http://amzn.to/1TyflEu         

Love on a Train     http://amzn.to/1m9eYCx

The Lady’s Arrangement      http://amzn.to/2qj7DE2

Out of Splinters and Ashes   https://amzn.to/2K0WTHt

Letters and Lies      https://amzn.to/2yNFGNv

Sonata Contineo     https://amzn.to/2I0zzYi

Love and War in Any Element by Colleen L. Donnelly

MUSE MONDAY

Please welcome my guest, Colleen L. Donnelly with a very entertaining post...

It’s movie night in front of the DVD player and the males are voting for action movies – conquests, fighting, and chest-thumping winners bloodied from their victories. The females argue against two hours of unrelated sequences of brutality and heroic feats, hoping for a more tightly woven saga involving a hero and a heroine on an adventure riddled with conflict and camaraderie until they ultimately wind up in a chest-to-chest loving embrace. Two different…wait…are those two types of scenarios actually different? Can the story of two fighters in a ring parallel the conflicts of a boy and a girl on their way to becoming a couple? “Ewwww” and “No” are the most likely reactions from the moving-watching crowd, but I beg to differ.

I looked at what I write and the movies I watch (or am subjected to) and discovered relationships are the basis of almost any story told – a boy pitted against the elements in order to survive, a girl finding herself loved in spite of self-doubt, a country vying against another for power, aliens and other planets warring against earth, animals forming unlikely bonds to overcome obstacles, thieves trying to outsmart the law… All of them hinge on relationships in one form or another – one being encountering another or themselves, and clambering toward a hopefully positive outcome.

My writer’s eye watches for conflict, seeking out what will make or break a relationship, and ultimately a good story. Even though none of my characters resolve their issues with guns or soccer balls, the wars are there – the unloved wife accused of infidelity in “Asked For,” the young woman whose heart belonged to another instead of to the man her family had arranged for her to marry in “Love on a Train.” Or, the conflict searing enough to split a family into two warring factions, unforgiveness vs forgiveness, in “Mine to Tell.”

So, can peace and harmony reign in front of the television between the two factions warring over physical vs emotional conflict? Can those with romantic notions see heroes vanquishing and vanquished by more than a heroine’s heart? And can those with non-romantic notions concede John Wayne did win and lose less manly sorts of battles, and did so without a gun? To a degree, yes. Because, no matter what our pleasure, there is a relationship buried in any encounter somewhere.

“Mine to Tell” is the story of the Crouse family shame, three generations accepting great-grandfather Isaac’s claim that his wife, Julianne, had done the unthinkable when she disappeared for two weeks. Great-granddaughter, Annabelle, on the cusp of her own marriage, decides to do the unthinkable herself and give Julianne a chance to tell her side of the story. With both great-grandparents long since deceased, Annabelle unboards the closed-up house Isaac had relegated Julianne to, and moves in, believing the truth is there somewhere and it will set the Crouse family women free. Annabelle’s actions further split her family as well as her own engagement as she determines to find the truth, her only faithful companions in her venture being her great-grandmother’s hidden story and the quiet young man down the road she’d ignored while growing up.

Excerpt:

“Mine to tell,” Kyle said suddenly. It was a jolt. I was yanked from my mental tumble into a pit of unredemption. Alex looked up too, a quizzical expression on his face. “Julianne left a story behind,” Kyle continued. “Some of it speculation and rumors by people who don’t know, and the rest of it by her own hand. It was a love story. One that was countered with suffering.” 

We were all quiet. I looked at him, my heart melting as I heard his masculine voice speak of love and suffering. I wanted to lean across the table and hug him, but I was too afraid. 

Alex leaned back in his chair. “What my father went through didn’t feel like love when we were little.” 

“But maybe it was,” Kyle persisted, his tone smooth and even. “Does love always turn out the way we want it to?” Then he looked at me. “Julianne Crouse was a fine woman. We haven’t finished her story, but she suffered, and she was fine indeed.” 

Tears came to my eyes. “Thank you,” I squeaked. Kyle stood and walked around the table to me. He helped me stand as he thanked them for their time. He retrieved Julianne’s picture, took my hand, and together we went to the door, Alex and his wife following us. 

“I hope you’re right,” Alex said, running his hand through his thin, brittle hair as we stepped outside. “My father had some things to come to terms with, but he was a good man. A better man later in life, when he told us he was sorry. I never knew for what.” 

Buy link to “Mine to Tell”   http://amzn.to/1PNJo4S

Buy Link to “Love on a Train”  http://amzn.to/1m9eYCx

Buy Link to “Asked For”  http://amzn.to/1TyflEu