Guest Post: Sharon Owen

Curling Up By The Fire would like to welcome Sharon Owen, author of Thicker Than Water, the first in a series of novels set in Brands Crossing, Texas. It chronicles the lives of the Kincaids, a prominent family in this mythical town, and focuses on a mystery that extends back to the mid-eighteenth century and the young Texas Republic.

As a child, KATE O'DONNELL spends summers at her grandparents' estate in Brands Crossing, Texas where she  battles make-believe monsters, rescues endangered victims and a saves a mythical kingdom.

At twenty-five Kate is a singer/songwriter living in Nashville and pursuing a promising relationship with computer game designer PHILLIP NORWOOD. There, her only battles are fought in Aidenne's Revenge, Phillip's online fantasy game based on her childhood adventures. 

When her grandfather is critically injured in a suspicious car crash, Kate  abandons career and romance to return home to solve the mystery.There, she  searches for incriminating documents, investigates a centuries-old family feud and confronts an anonymous rose-bearing admirer who stalks Kate in both real and virtual universes.

 SAVE THE CAT MOMENT

Many of you have probably already read the wonderful book Save The Cat by screenwriter Blake Snyder.

If so you will remember the Save the Cat moment for the protagonist.

If not, here’s a brief explanation: Snyder contends that “liking the person we go on a journey with [the novel's primary character] is the single most important element in drawing us [the audience] into the story”. To illustrate that, he introduces the Save the Cat scene “… the scene where we meet the hero and the hero does something–like saving a cat–that defines who he is and makes us, the audience, like him”.

In my first published novel Thicker Than Water (Brands Crossing Series), the protagonist, Kate O’Donnell has one of those moments in the Prologue. Eight-years-old at the time, she is spending the summer with her grandparents in Brands Crossing, Texas. The reader is first introduced to Kate when she runs out of the woods with a wounded rabbit, begging her grandfather to heal it and punish the poacher who shot it.

This scene, hopefully, makes the reader like Kate, but also, defines her character. 25-year-old Kate reveals the same qualities. Her dog and cat are rescue pets, she defends her aging Volvo when friends and family tell her to trade up to a vehicle manufactured in the 21st century and she walks away from romance and career to return to Brands Crossing and avenge her grandfather’s murder.

Do you have a Save the Cat moment in your novel?

Could you share it?

Author Biography

Sharon K Owen is a fiction writer, a university professor, an online writing instructor, a freelance writer, a copy editor and a consultant for social media and self-publishing projects.

Her first novel: Thicker Than Water (Brands Crossing Series) was published in 2011 and the second book in the series, Whatever Goes Around, will be published in March, 2012.

Sharon’s short stories and poetry have been published in Descant, Concho River Review, Iron Horse, American Literary Review, Trinity Writer's Workshop newsletter and collections of Christmas stories.

She shares a cozy sanctuary in a small lakeside town in North Texas with her two cats (Matt and Cinders).