Whether you are just starting out or have been writing for awhile, you might find my content on Quora helpful. https://www.quora.com/profile/Lisa-Barker-83
If you don’t see the answer you’re looking for, please feel free to contact me via my contact page. I’m happy to help or encourage a fellow writer!
New book coming out in 2022!
Working title: Take a Chance
Working summary: Eloise meets Jason in a Romance Writer’s Club that Zooms weekly. Eloise likes him but is convinced that after two failed marriages, the right thing to do is not get involved; her mental health would make it unfair for a new partner. But she explores a committed relationship in the romance novel she is writing. Perhaps the third time is a charm?
Working cover:
This year’s goal is to boost my second novel to 20K by writing at least 15 minutes a day.
Review:
THE HARD SIDE OF THE RIVER
By Johnny Payne
A tale of abolition, THE HARD SIDE OF THE RIVER, engulfed me in the immediacy of the characters, their lives, and their demons.
Certainly, this is a tale of setting Jacob Pingram, a slave, free. Two abolitionists, Dana Curbstone, a proprietor and headmistress of a finishing school, and Cal Fenton, a preacher called by God to free slaves, set out to help Pingram escape. They are tracked by Dan Baskin–the protagonist; a famous, expert slave tracker who is so entrenched in the historical and realistic slave-focused world created by Johnny Payne, that it takes an intimate encounter with a “Yoruba girl”, Abejide, a seventeen year old slave, to crack open his heart to the idea of love.
THE HARD SIDE is not only the story of one man’s escape from slavery, from being owned and at the mercy of another simply for being “an inferior race”. It’s a narrative about the enslavement of human beings to their own demons, and THE HARD SIDE brings every character to their knees and their breaking point. How will they abolish what has become the internal norm for them, and be set free? Not every character does.
The quest for freedom in Johnny Payne’s novel is a quest for healing love. Even Jacob Pingram, who successfully escapes, is a slave in his mind and owned by his deepest regret. Dan Baskin is faced with the chance to escape the solitary hard life he has spent years building that leave him empty. Dana Curbstone wrestles with passions that threaten to consume her soul, and Cal Fenton faces the totality of himself and his calling–will it break his sanity?
The lives of secondary characters echo this quest for healing love. Will Rae, a slip of a young girl, escape dysfunction and poverty and embrace those who care for her? Will Leora, a prostitute that has pined for Dan for years, be set free from the hard existence life forced her to choose?
Johnny Payne’s THE HARD SIDE OF THE RIVER, will snatch you right out of your comfy chair and bring you into a hard world that only men that abuse their privilege seem to thrive in. When all looks bleak and hopeless, you will find yourself turning page after page seeking redemption and justice for these characters.
THE HARD SIDE OF THE RIVER left me feeling drenched in the sweat of their struggle, shocked and sorrowful for those that remained enslaved, and deeply satisfied with the freedom won by those that fought hardest for it.
–Lisa Barker, author of INHERITANCE
(100 word challenge)
A new, black bed frame; a black wooden headboard; sheets and comforter in light and deep grays; pewter curtains; a silver fluffy rug; a black mini fridge, even a fresh coat of paint. Monochrome-just how she views life. Not black and white, but all the grays in between. Not without color, but crisp images of a life well lived and loved.
Her own room, her own space, her sanctuary. A place to cuddle with cats, to watch comedies and dramas, to write.
Sunshine fills the recesses of the room leaving nothing shrouded in pain.
Clean and new. The Queen’s Room.
Use the code SS100 at checkout to get Inheritance for free.
(Offer good through July 31, 2020 )
(100 word challenge)
I miss you. I’m hurting and I can hardly breathe. You hurt, you’re broken, I accept you with all my heart. But you act as if you don’t love me, don’t want me, can’t stand me. You hold our son above my head. I cannot leave him to face these things without me. Alone.
You can’t make a commitment to me … in case It happens again. But It is! Windows between us are closing. You are going to find yourself lonely until another love comes to lift you up and save you.
And, in time, It will happen again.
Aliese toured their abandoned home. Old furniture and boxes of everyday life remained. She envisioned fresh paint, polished floors, a cozy nook to read in when the sun shined. Her sanctuary.
There was no delay now. She’d lingered far too long waiting for Paul. In the end he chose to move forward alone. Now, two paths diverged heading true north respectively.
The phone.
“Hello?”
“The papers have been filed.”
Sadness. He didn’t think or feel the way she did. Then …
Relief. A new life.
The beckoning path lay before her, calling her to autonomy.
She chose the road less traveled.
Tragic. But one of my favorites in Flash Fiction.
See history here.
(100 word challenge)
He jammed a pike into the floating ice. She watched it split jaggedly and separate. For the second time, he sailed toward a better life without her.
There would not be a third.
As his image diminished with distance, she imagined soil beneath her feet. Grass grew.
The sun rose behind her and she turned to face it. This time she would sail away, too.
The ocean gently nudged the ice-raft westward. She lifted her chin. She did not need to rise this time because she had never fallen. Her heart encapsulated the Phoenix. Ice would never imprison her.
