January | 2024 | Joanne Guidoccio

I’m happy to welcome multi-published author and poet Rachel Dacus. Today, Rachel shares her new release, Return to Lerici.

Blurb

A suspenseful, uplifting story of second chances, family bonds, and redemption.

Sisters Elinor and Saffron rarely see eye-to-eye, but they agree that an unknown half-brother appearing in their lives can only spell trouble. The Greene sisters want to support their ailing mother, Betsy, as they gather in their cottage in Lerici, Italy. But they don’t want Betsy to keep searching for Baby Boy, the only name they have on faded adoption papers.

While the Greenes debate, Baby Boy finds them. A rough childhood has led Daniel to a life as a thief. When he learns of his connection to the wealthy Greenes, he decides to scam them. He goes to Italy and using a fake identity observes them at close range. Watching these people makes him ache for what he never had—a loving family.

Betsy is touched by the young man’s story and guesses their hidden connection. Discovering his true identity, she asks the family to help him. But Daniel’s shady past is catching up and putting the Greenes at risk. Should they bring their lost lamb into the fold—and can he claim his heritage if it endangers his family?

Excerpt

Robert sang a few words. “How about this?”

“I don’t know it, but it sounds good.”

“It’s my own. I wrote it.”

He began to strum, accompanying his soft voice, and Betsy had another jolt of recognition. It was the voice. There was so much of a similarity in the timbre that it made her ache. She wondered what Elinor would think if she came in while he was singing and heard Nathan’s singing voice coming out of this young man.

The song soothed her every aching muscle and bone. It did her body good and her nerves too. Like a fond memory, it wrapped her in the sensation that life was good and harmonious, that there was honey in every breeze and heaven just around the corner. He had a gift, this fellow. He definitely had talent. So how had he wound up tinkering with plumbing in Lerici? Maybe her intuition was true, and he had come for them.

Betsy lay back as he sang, her arm across her eyes, and thought of days past when musicians sang just for her, and she went home with one of them. Days long before Nathan and his stuffy circle of academics. The music was pulling her back to a time when she could relax and be herself, and her stuffy daughter didn’t criticize her every impulse and comment. She understood that Elinor felt criticized by her; what Elinor didn’t realize is that she’d adopted Betsy’s habit of sharp comments. And somewhere—God knew where—she’d picked up that skepticism that was going to burn her sweetheart down, if she didn’t marry the wonderful Tonio soon.

Robert strummed a last chord, his voice fading into the silence.

She sat up and looked at him. They stared at each other for a moment.

“You remind me of someone,” she murmured. “My ex-husband, Nathan.”

Why didn’t Robert look surprised?

Author Bio and Links

Rachel Dacus is the author of six novels, four time travel books in the Timegathering Series and two books of women’s fiction. She has also published four poetry collections. Rachel’s work has appeared widely in print and online, in journal that include Boulevard, Gargoyle, and Prairie Schooner. Her poetry is in the anthologies Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Radiant DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Amazon Author Page

Giveaway

Rachel Dacus will be awarding a $15 Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Find out more here.

Follow Rachel on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.

Riveted from the start, I struggled to put down this well-plotted, character-driven novel. Set in a picturesque town on the Ligurian coast, the storyline alternates between the members of the Greene family: half-sisters Elinor and Saffron, their mother Betsy, and Daniel, aka Baby Boy. I immediately connected with all the characters. I could empathize with Elinor’s wish to live a calm, predictable life while also appreciating Betsy’s more dramatic antics. I enjoyed reading about Saffron’s relationship with the spirit of nineteenth-century poet Shelley and learning more about his connection to the Greene family. And I found myself rooting for Daniel, the underdog who struggled with a rough childhood and brief foray into a life of petty crime.

Written as a sequel to The Invisibles, Return to Lerici can be easily read as a stand-alone novel.

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

In his best-selling book Atomic Habits, James Clear shares practical strategies for habit formation. Here’s an excerpt from the “Make It Easy” section of the book:

Even when you know you should start small, it’s easy to start too big. When you dream about making a change, excitement inevitably takes over and you end up trying to do too much too soon. The most effective way I know to counteract this tendency is to use the Two-Minute Rule, which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”

You’ll find that nearly any habit can be scaled down into a two-minute version:

“Read before bed each night” becomes “Read one page.”

“Do thirty minutes of yoga” becomes “Take out my yoga mat.”

“Study for class” becomes “Open my notes.”

“Run three miles” becomes “Tie my running shoes.”

The idea is to make your habits as easy as possible to start. Anyone can meditate for one minute, read one page, or put one item of clothing away. This is a powerful strategy because once you’ve started doing the right thing, it is much easier to continue doing it. A new habit should not feel like a challenge. The actions that follow can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy. What you want is a “gateway habit” that naturally leads you down a more productive path.

You can usually figure out the gateway habits that will lead to your desired outcome by mapping out your goals on a scale from “very easy” to “very hard.” For instance, running a marathon is very hard. Running 5K is hard. Walking ten thousand steps is moderately difficult. Walking ten minutes is easy. And putting on your running shoes is very easy. Your goal might be to run a marathon, but your gateway habit is to put on your running shoes. That’s how you follow the Two-Minute Rule.

People often think it’s weird to get hyped about reading one page or meditating for one minute or making one sales call. But the point is not to do one thing. The point is to master the habit of showing up. The truth is, a habit must be established before it can be improved. If you can’t learn the basic skill of showing up, then you have little hope of mastering the finer details. Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize.

Source: Atomic Habits by James Clear, pp. 162-164.