Today marks the end of both Alice’s story and all the character blogs for the women of Happiness Key.  Thanks so much to all of you who let me know you’ve looked forward to them.  Remember, if you’re tantalized by these sneak peeks, my publisher is offering a coupon good until the end of July.  Not all booksellers take them, so make sure to ask.  And if you’ve fallen behind here, you can easily access all the character blogs from my archives. 

Don’t forget, too, that if you comment on any blog with “Happiness” in the title, and tell us what makes you happy, you’ll be entered in my beach bag giveaway, stuffed with goodies by the women you’ve met here over the past month.  For details, prizes and requirements, go to my contest page. 

Because I bet you’d like to know, my fabulous assistant Marna is compiling your answers, and at the contest’s end, we’ll tell you what makes the readers of Emilie Richards happy. 

And now, the final portion of Alice’s story.

Afterwards it was even harder for me to manage alone. Grief, I suppose, and old age, loneliness and possibly another stroke. I’m not sure what I would have done if Lee hadn’t stepped in. He knew how much Karen had done for me, and he knew I couldn’t go on without help. He also knew how much I loved Olivia. So Lee proposed that he and Olivia move in and take care of me until I was ready to move elsewhere. He didn’t want to live in the house he and Karen had shared because there were too many memories there. This way we could all help each other.

I just wish I weren’t so easily confused.  And I wish I had a good woman friend to talk to.  I think friends would make all the difference. 

When Happiness Key was still just an idea, I had a fantasy about writing the novel completely in first person, using the viewpoints of all four major characters. I love first person, use it exclusively in my mystery series, and would love to use it in my other novels.  But once I started the character sketches in first person, I realized that I could tell the “story” better in third.  I made a judgment call that being in the head of one woman, followed closely by another, might be confusing for my readers and me, as well.  So I settled for third person, but with a “deeper” look into my character’s thoughts, a writing style that can effectively give a first person feel to a third person point of view.

More than you wanted to know about a writer’s choices?  Consider another.  Alice has suffered from a stroke and both she and the people around her are afraid she may be descending into dementia.  Did I want to convey that in her thoughts?  Did I want my readers to be aware of everything that worried her, including her own confusion?

In the end, Alice has no point of view in the novel.  She’s a strong presence, but you’ll notice we are never inside Alice’s head except here, on my blog and in the character sketches I did before I began my novel.  So without further introduction, let’s allow Alice to have her say once and for all.  And if you’re new to this series of blogs by my characters, you can find the other women, Tracy, Janya and Wanda in previous blogs, three to a character.  If you go to my archives, you can access each one easily from the table of contents.

Enjoy!

Fred and I were married young. I was only ten when World War II broke out, and my father was too old to serve. But even at that young age, the war taught me a valuable lesson. A person shouldn’t put off the things they want because one never knows what’s waiting around the corner. So at sixteen, head over heels about the young man who pumped my father’s gas at the local service station, I said yes when he asked me to marry him.