Title: Love Water Memory

Author: Jennie Shortridge

Genre: Women’s Fiction

Publication Date: January 14, 2014

Publisher: Gallery Books

Event organized by: Literati Author Services, Inc.

Synopsis

If you could do it all over again, would you still choose him?

At age thirty-nine, Lucie Walker has no choice but to start her life over when she comes to, up to her knees in the chilly San Francisco Bay, with no idea how she got there or who she is. Her memory loss is caused by an emotional trauma she knows nothing about, and only when handsome, quiet Grady Goodall arrives at the hospital does she learn she has a home, a career, and a wedding just two months away. What went wrong? Grady seems to care for her, but Lucie is no more sure of him than she is of anything. As she collects the clues of her past self, she unlocks the mystery of what happened to her. The painful secrets she uncovers could hold the key to her future—if she trusts her heart enough to guide her.

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1. The book trailer for Love Water Memory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZl0HLS6V3M

2. My music playlist, which can't be found on Spotify, are songs that I recorded that are either from the book, or inspired by the book. The link is:

http://www.jennieshortridge.com/music.php

Guestpost

The Books That Made Me Want to Become a Writer, AKA Great writers who influenced my own writing, sometimes without me even knowing it.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I know, I know, everyone says it! But we love it because it was probably the first book we read as kids that actually felt achingly true. We felt everything Scout felt, from confused to ornery to hopping mad at the injustice she discovered in the world.

2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. I loved the adventure and the adventurer. I loved the real voice of a boy in that era. I was incensed by the racial injustice (are you sensing a pattern here?) I felt that I’d learned something important when I was done.

3. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, by Anne Tyler. My first out and out dysfunctional family story, and I couldn’t get enough. I immediately read all of the books she’d written. I wanted more and more.

4. Six of One, Rita Mae Brown. It was the same with this one, but this time there was humor as well as dysfunction. I read everything she wrote until she started writing cat mysteries. I love cats, to be sure, but not books about them.

5. The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver. This story evoked so much more of the world than I knew when I read it, and so much that I wanted to know and do and feel. It felt important in an unassuming way, and I guess I would like to think I might be able to achieve that in my own work some day.

6. The World According to Garp, by John Irving. I loved this broadly funny and heartbreaking story. Just when I thought I was safely in the land of absurdity, I was crying my eyes out over a character’s loss. I read everything he wrote for the longest time.

7. Another Roadside Attraction, by Tom Robbins. Again, I was delighted at the absurdity, and felt I must be kin to this strange writer because he thought of things so oddly, so outside the norm. I always felt that way, that I was not quite on the same page as everyone else around me. Now I know everyone feels this way!

8. Yellow Raft on Blue Water, by Michael Dorris. This excruciating story told in three viewpoints (daughter, mother, grandmother) floored me in its execution, how each narrator was able to fill in the story for the reader as the other narrators couldn’t. Masterful, and an emotional read.

9. The Liar’s Club, by Mary Karr. A true story of childhood trauma, something  I’d experienced but didn’t acknowledge for a very long time. I let Mary do some of the heavy lifting for me in my process, writing this harrowing and beautiful book.

10. And most recently, The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. Rarely do books feel so real and painful, and yet so hopeful and true, in the best sense of the word. It is true that we can transcend our misfortunes. Read John Green if you don’t believe me. This is the way I aspire to write.


Excerpt

Chapter 1
SHE BECAME AWARE of a commotion behind her, yet it seemed important to continue looking out over the water toward low mountains, a skiff of clouds. A bridge in the distance, familiar. And something else, something that shimmered on the periphery of… what, the horizon? Her vision? No, her mind. Something she’d come to find. Voices called out; the people behind her. Seagulls shrieked from the pier on the right. Just past them, the masts of tall ships creaked slowly back and forth as though they’d been there forever, only she was just now seeing them.

“Hello?” A distinct male voice, closer. She tried to turn to see him but her legs felt numb. No, they were cold. Ice cold. Dead legs. Was she dead? Where was she? What was this place?

She looked down and saw dark water to her knees. She held high heels in one hand and shouldered a large purse that made her neck ache. Her skirt was wet at the hem.

“Excuse me, are you okay?” Closer still.

“I don’t know,” she said, turning her head. That she could do, at least.

The man waded toward her from the beach, wearing only a skimpy bathing suit and black swim cap on his head, strapped beneath his chin. She tried to move away from him—who was he? Why was he dressed like that? He was so exposed—his chest, his arms, his mid-section—freckled and sun-weathered, a thick white scar on his abdomen she didn’t want to see. Why was he so naked here with her? And then she noticed a crowd of people dressed similarly standing at the shore, men and women, some in wetsuits, others in swimsuits. All with those black caps. All looking at her.

“I can’t feel my legs,” she admitted.

“I bet,” he said. “You’ve been in here nearly half an hour and the water’s only sixty degrees.” He stopped a few feet away. He seemed friendly, like someone’s brother, maybe. Laugh lines creased his face, but his smile was tentative. “Do you want to come out now?” He looked at her in a way that said she really should, so she nodded.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She opened her mouth to tell him, but didn’t know what to say. He waded closer, slowly, carefully, like someone would approach a hurt dog or a crazy person.

“Do you live around here?” he asked. “Or did you come down from the cable car?”

Did he think she was crazy? She wished he would quit asking her questions. It hurt inside, trying to figure out how to answer. Her head throbbed now, or maybe it had all along.

She let him come right up to her and take her by the arm. His hand was warm, and his arm and body, and she realized she was freezing, even though the sun lit everything around them into a sharp, bright world she didn’t know.

“Want to try to walk back to the shore?” he asked, gently rotating her until they faced the crowd on the sand, a banner behind them that read “Alcatraz Open Water Invitational.” They were all going swimming, she guessed. All at once.

“Is she all right?” someone called.

“I think we’d better call 911,” he answered.

“Already did,” another replied.

“It’s just my legs,” she said. “They’re so cold. I’ll just put my shoes back on.”

“Okay,” he said, slowly walking her toward shore. “Let’s just keep moving.”

She slid her feet like blocks across sandpaper. They hurt now. Everything hurt now. Something was changing inside her, trying to speed up to catch the cog, but there were only broken gears grinding against each other. She wanted to turn back and stay looking across the water, to find what she came for, but the man kept guiding her toward the crowd. Behind them were too many buildings, and behind those, a hill of more buildings.

She looked up and saw letters against the sky. “Ghirardelli.” Oh, she would love some chocolate.

A tall woman in a black swimsuit waded out and wrapped an arm around her shoulders as the man kept hold of her arm. They were so warm.

“You’re going to be okay,” the woman said, but she wasn’t sure. She heard a siren now, and shuddered.

An ambulance screamed down the pier next to the beach. Red lights, blue lights. Such a horrible loud sound. It hurt almost as much as trying to answer questions. She hated sirens, maybe the most of everything.

Others rushed forward with towels, swaddling her inside them, taking her shoes and bag away from her. People in uniforms pushed through the crowd, insisting she lie on the sand. Yes, that was good. She was exhausted.

“What’s your name?” they kept asking while checking her heart, her pulse, putting an oxygen mask on her face. “Where’s your ID? What day is it? Do you know where you are? Who’s the president of the United States?”

“Obama,” she finally murmured into the mask. It was the only answer she had, and as good as it felt to know her president, it was nowhere near enough.


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