The Fragrance of Life

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard
Scent is a powerful thing. The slightest whiff of a particular scent can rouse memories you haven’t thought about in years, evoking unexpected emotions. The fragrance of my mom’s favorite hand lotion will bring memories of her flooding back to me. For others the smell of oil might take them back to their first car, or a day spent with their dad working on the old jalopey. The smell of leather might remind you of that cool guy you dated in twelfth grade.
Since I write romantic suspense, you’re probably thinking–fragrances…romance…I know where she’s going with this. Trust me when I say…probably not.

Do you have Japanese beetles where you live?
They’re quite attractive, with shiny green and bronze shield-like backs. But destructive! Think plague of locusts.
I knew we had to take action when the leaves on my linden turned to lacy skeletons and began falling in mid-June, a full three months too soon. 
When the beetles, migrated to my bean plants, we declared all out war. 
We discovered a nifty way to catch these beetles without using pesticides. You hang a plastic bag, like the one in the picture, upwind from the infestation and place a pouch of female beetle pheromones inside.
Instantly, hundreds of beetles lifted from our bean plants, and swarmed to the source of the scent.
Wow, that was one powerful fragrance.
It reminded me of the verse in 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?
A humbling thought, isn’t it? 
When I catch myself acting not so fragrant, I think of that swarm of beetles and how very much I want to be the fragrance of life to those around me. How about you?
Today’s smile:
You remember Bella, my connoisseur-of-hubcaps pup?
Well, she felt sorry for all those Japanese beetles doped up on pheromones. After all dogs have an acute sense of smell. So… she liberated them!
Yup, it’s true. As my daughter told my husband, “You had to know that was going to happen.”
Have a fragrant weekend! 

WHERE STORIES COME FROM:

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

The most common question I’m asked when people find out I’m a writer is: where do I get my ideas?

The answer: from everywhere.
They may come from a news report, or from an incident I see while out and about. The other day my friend called to ask me if I knew what MPAC was because some stranger claiming to be from the organization had left a note in her door saying he’d missed her and would drop by again.
Instantly, a suspense plot began to form in my mind. In Ontario, MPAC is the organization that does the market value assessments on which our property taxes are based. But what if the guy wasn’t really from MPAC?
What if he was going around neighborhoods posing as an MPAC assessor, but really casing homes for robberies?
Or what if he was posing as an MPAC assessor to target the heroine specifically?
That last question opened up a whole new range of questions. Why’s the guy targeting her? What does he plan to do? Maybe he’s not so much interested in her as in baiting the hero to do something… 
Ooh, why might he want to bait the hero?
You get the idea. That sort of brainstorming is my favorite part of creating a story. My eighteen-year-old daughter is also a writer and we have a lot of fun playing with story ideas–especially villains.
For example, the last time we went kayaking, I remarked on how easy it would be to…well, actually I’m not going to tell you what, because I don’t want to give criminals any ideas! But the simple observation prompted a slew of ideas on how we could use that crime in a story.
Your turn: Let’s go back to our nefarious MPAC assessor impersonator. Why might he want to bait the hero? Let your imagination run wild. You’ll be amazed at how quickly the creative juices start flowing. Share your ideas and watch where they lead. It’s a lot of fun.
Warning: You may start looking at the people who knock on your door a little more warily. (Cue spine-tingling music)

Undercover Cops ~ Is it possible to be a man of honor and live a life of lies?

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard
Thank you to all who shared their hilarious pet stories over the weekend. Today, we’re going to talk about a different kind of character, or rather character trait. Being honorable. 
 
I think it’s safe to say that most female romance readers, as well as the heroines that populate romance novels, long to fall in love with an honorable man.
 
My dictionary defines honorable as “having or showing a sense of what is right and proper; honest; upright: It is not honorable to lie or cheat.” 
 
Ouch! Not looking good for Deep Cover’s hero Rick Gray, an undercover cop who’s obligated to keep his true identity, occupation and purpose from the heroine Ginny, a woman who esteems honesty above all else.
 
Rick likes Ginny, really likes her, and desperately wants her to see him as honorable. Each Love Inspired book has a scripture quote before the title page. For Deep Cover, it reads ‘There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.’” Luke 12:2
 
For most people the verse is an uncomfortable truth, whereas Rick longs for the day he can disclose his true life to Ginny. The day she will finally understand that he works for a greater good. The day she will know he’s honorable. 
 
Rick holds to the maxim that the end justifies the means. But as an undercover cop, sometimes those means are contrary to God’s Word.
 
It’s an interesting dilemma, don’t you think?
 
For Rick, feigning to be someone he’s not in order to bring a bad guy to justice is not the problem. Perpetuating the lie with a woman he cares for—for the sake of the case and her own protection—is.
 
But the bad guys need to be stopped. And he’s working within the law to do that. He’s doing his job. Yet, his conscience is torn.
 
I asked Lee Lofland, retired police officer and author of the suspense writer’s must-have book Police Procedure & Investigations, to give us his perspective on the dilemma. Here’s what he had to say:
 
A cop’s job is certainly a tough one, and all one has to do is watch the evening news to see why—shootouts, car chases, kidnappings, robberies, murder, and, well, you get the idea. But there’s a private side to law enforcement that not many people see. And that’s the side where an officer must sometimes push his/her core beliefs aside to get the job done.
 
An undercover assignment can have a negative impact on officers who try their best to keep their faith intact while working in an extremely faithless environment. After all, working undercover often means having to take on the guise of an immoral person. And some real-life cops have found themselves in a genuine struggle trying to separate reality from their make-believe undercover world.
 
Officers like Rick Gray, who protect others at all costs, eventually rise above the rest. They’re the officers who take their oaths seriously. Sure it’s a tough job, and it takes a tough person to do it, but isn’t toughness a trait of all heroes?
 
Thanks, Lee. Speaking with officers to research for this story, and participating in the Writer’s PoliceAcademy that Lee organizes, and writing Rick’s story, has certainly given me a broader appreciation of the emotional havoc law enforcement officers sometimes face.
 
Your turn: What do you think? Is it possible to be a man of honor and live a life of lies?

We’re Talking Character

Posted on: by Sandra Orchard

Okay, so this blog is about characters… And I have a real one in my house. 
The dog. 
She’s graduated from ripping apart rubber boots to gnawing on my hubcaps! 
Now, in fairness to the poor puppy, it’s not as if she ripped them off my car. 
If she had I’d be signing her up for the next movie spoof on street crime in Harlem.
No, she snatched them from the garage. But really…what was my son thinking not putting them back on the car when he changed out the snow tires?
We’re talking puppy here. And well…hubcaps they look like giant Frisbees. Don’t you think?
She apparently thinks they’re the greatest thing since—well—rubber boots.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Hubcaps are metal. How much damage could one little puppy do? I mean she’s so sweet she flops over dead if you so much as say bang— unless you don’t have a visible treat, then she moans a lot on the way down. Come to think of it, maybe the movies is where she really needs to be…
But back to my hubcaps. Did you know hubcaps have these little plastic tabs that hold them in place. Plastic! What teething pup could resist plastic?
I must say to her credit that as soon as you tell her not to chew something, she stops and won’t do it again. She has lots of perfectly sound chew toys to prove it. My mistake was in only telling her not to chew hubcap number one!
Your turn: What’s the funniest, cutest or most annoying thing your pet has ever done? Click on “Comments” to share.