Author Spotlight: Bestie Liz Flaherty Joins Me Today–Always a Pleasure!

I’m so glad to welcome my writing bestie, author Liz Flaherty to the Spotlight today. I stole her bio right off her website because it charms the socks off me.

She wanted to shake the dust of central Indiana farm country and move to the city, get rich, wear designer clothes, and write books.

Well, she writes books.​

Liz Flaherty lives five miles from where she grew up, only now she relishes the sights and sounds and scents of the fields around her, doesn’t care much about clothes, and thinks being rich would probably have been overrated anyway.  She’s spent the past several years enjoying not working a day job, making terrible crafts, and writing stories in which the people aren’t young, brilliant, or even beautiful. She’s decided (and has to re-decide nearly every day) that the definition of success is having a good time. Along with Duane, her husband of lo, these many years, kids, grands, friends, and the occasional cat, she’s doing just that.

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When I was trying to decide what to write about, I asked Nan what I should bring to her blog. It being the holidays, I suggested a charcuterie board and apples.  She told me to “Bring whatever makes you happy.” See how bossy she is?

But, well, hey, it’s December. Almost everything makes me happy during the holidays. My faith, buying presents, decorations, food (I was serious about the charcuterie board, the apples not so much), even my sparkly red nail polish. And then I thought of what really does the happiness trick for me every time. It was my thought on the 29th of my 30 Days of Gratitude in November. Today I am grateful for having and being enough.

I try to remind myself of that a lot. I think having enough is easy to be grateful for, because a person never really forgets not having enough. It’s why some of us clean our plates, always bargain shop, and feel guilt with every new pair of shoes we buy.

Being enough is a little harder, because people don’t tell you that, even the ones who believe you are. You can’t see it in the mirror … you’re more likely to look at your hips in those pants and think you’re more than enough. It’s not something that comes in a prescription. I’ve never seen it listed on an employment application, either as a job qualification or a life goal.

It’s just something you know, and believe me when I say it took me many, many years to know it, to embrace it, and to … be it. Because I was the one I had to convince.

I want to do a little promo thing here on my trio of Christmas stories. They aren’t new; rather they are from anthologies in past years. They are stories I love and am proud of writing. They are just novellas, and they are just 99 cents apiece.

Oh, but wait! What did I say up there? Did I say these were just novellas? Did I say they were just 99 cents? Well, yeah, I guess I did. They’re novellas because they’re short, you know, and 99 cents because … they’re short.

Do you know what else they are? They are enough. They are stories with a beginning full of change, a middle in which the arc twists its way to … yes, the happy end, which is the reward. What I want for them is that they give their readers a few laughs (and maybe a tear or two) and some satisfaction. That they give them, as I’ve said way too often, not a change of life—just a good afternoon.

One of my greatest lessons that came with age is that my definition of success is having a good time without hurting anyone. It’s writing or reading a good book. It’s finding ways of being happy. It’s knowing I have and am enough.

So are you.

Thanks for having me today, Nan, and Merry Christmas to you all!

The Magic Stocking

When Ellie Griffith comes to Christmas Town, Maine, to sell socks, her overachieving family accuses her of running away and extending her lifelong habit of never finishing anything she starts. In her heart, broken by being left nearly at the altar, she thinks they’re probably right, but she has to try one more time. But maybe, just maybe, the stories of magic in Christmas Town are true. Amazon  D2D

A New Kind of Hope

They were best friends who fell in love, but that was high school. Life and families and other loves had happened since that dear and distant time. They’re friends again, comfortable with each other and having so much fun at Christmas time in Dickens. They’re not still in love, but…wait…could it be happening again? Amazon D2D

The Dark Horse

When widowed Chloe Brewton meets Major Row Welcome, she feels stirrings of old wishes. The attraction is mutual, although the last thing either of them is interested in is marriage or family. But then there’s teenager Connor Michaud and his three younger siblings. Oh, no. Amazon

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Liz Flaherty thinks one of the things that keeps you young when you quite obviously aren’t anymore is the constant chances you have to reinvent yourself. Her latest professional incarnation is as a fledgling women’s fiction author and she is enjoying every minute that she’s not scared to death.

She can be reached at lizkflaherty@gmail.com

Website: https://www.lizflaherty.net/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lizkflaherty

And everyplace else through https://linktr.ee/LizFlaherty