Keeping it social

(or…where to find me online)

Blog

Backstory is the name of both my blog and newsletter. I’m not a very good blogger; I don’t stick to a schedule, which means I don’t blog routinely. I post every now and again; posting just to post leads to boring reading, I think.

So, where can we connect?

I love Instagram. You can also find me using writers hashtags on Instagram. I post about books I’m reading, and snippets of my writing process and writing samples. Meatier stuff is in my e-letter.

We can also connect on my Facebook page. (Maybe some day a there will be a group. 🙂  Odds and ends, book talk, podcasts I listen to and other random thoughts. In other words, it could be most anything related to reading or writing.

But where the in-depth details and top-secret things are 😉 is in my Backstory e-letter. Behind the scenes happenings, writing samples, and other writing-related explorings.

Here’s a sample (it’s the first e-letter I sent out):

*****

Hey there!

Cheryl Russell, (if you’ve forgotten the person behind this letter) here and I’m sending you a long over-due newsletter. No worries about it this being a long update, though. 🙂

New Website

I have a new website. I’m still working on adding content to it, but I think it looks much better and the software is certainly easier to use. So far, anyway. 🙂 If you have any thoughts, good or bad, let me know by hitting reply.

Backstory

The initial idea for my current work in progress came from thinking about time. And theology. (God exists outside of time, so is all time actually present to God–there is no past or future?) Time to us is linear–past, present, future. But what if…time ceased to be linear and became always present? The “what if” question drives a lot of my fiction writing, if not all of it. I’m comfortable with the unknown and curious as to what else may be present just outside of our senses.

Also? I live in a place where Amish are prevalent–the past and present co-exist here. 🙂 Even though the lifestyles are completely different, they are dependent on each other. Same with Sweetwater County–the present and past are intertwined and influence each other in good and bad ways.

Work in progress

Revisions. That is what I’m working on, but I hope to have them done no later than June 1st. I’ve had fun coming up with a fictional town, county, and populating them with characters. Sweetwater County is a place where time is fluid and past and present flow into and out of each other. Why? I’m not sure. An idea popped into my head while hiking in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, but I need to think about it some more, so folklore and legends may be forthcoming. People in Sweetwater County and the surrounding area don’t think twice about how time works in their county because it is just the way life is and has been for a very long time.

As a way of dividing up the book, I’m incorporating historical signs about the fictional community of Buck’s Eye to keep the tourists/history buffs informed. Here’s one:

Welcome to Buck’s Eye Village
pop. 23,327 or there abouts
County Seat for Sweetwater County (pop. 51,201 more or less at any given time)
Sweetwater County/Buck’s Eye Village:
Where past and present slip into each other on occasion
allowing certain residents unusual interactions.
Please respect our residents of any time period and kindly refrain
from recording interactions with those seen and unseen.
Photographs in designated public areas only.
Violators will be dealt with according to the time period of our choosing.
Thank you for visiting and we hope you come again soon.
(Gray, foggy, cold days of November, December and occasionally March,
As well as the hot humid days of summer
(and sometimes May) are considered high season.
Prices for activities and goods
as well as the activities and goods themselves
vary according to weather/season.
No refunds.