Extract from Chapter 22 of Mine to Avenge:

Alethea remembered Theo’s story, and thought about Dymas, the grandfather she had never known, and wondered what was going on in his life all those years ago to make him leave a lovely wife and two young sons he obviously adored.

Finally, she recalled her conversation with Casta. As foretold, Casta began the conversation easily enough, but it quickly became difficult for her, and she allowed herself to become distracted by attending to one of her grandchildren. Casta’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, had finished her mother’s story.

Of all the Galanos women, Casta was the one who hadn’t fully come to terms with her loss. Eleanor told Alethea that she had never known her father, as he disappeared just a week after she was born. She explained that Casta still believed that Stepan would come home one day. When Eleanor was born, Casta was on the threshold of postnatal depression, possibly triggered by Stepan’s irrational behaviour of the previous months, but the loss of her husband made the depression so much worse. Sitting waiting at the front of the hospital that fateful afternoon, left her with deep feelings of abandonment, rejection and betrayal.

Deep down Casta believed that Stepan had left her because she was a bad wife, and that she must have done something to make him leave. Thinking this meant she could allow herself to believe that he was still alive. She didn’t want to accept anything else. It would mean admitting that he was dead, and this she wouldn’t do. It was better to suppose that it was her fault, because that way he might come home one day when he could find it in his heart to forgive her. Eleanor said that it was also more understandable that Casta should reason this way than subscribe to the idea that Stepan was mentally unwell, since she had always rejected any suggestion of mental illness.

Alethea thought again of her conversation with Caterina. There was no way that any of these women believed this about their men, though it frequently nagged them all in the dark hours of the night, or so Eleanor told her.

Now that Alethea knew Casta’s story, she thought that she understood her better. Like Casta, she, too, had been holding on to her pain and keeping it close. But Alethea knew that she was further along the road to recovery than Casta.

She didn’t know why it was becoming easier. Maybe it was just the passage of time. She knew her mother and Mila were also finding things easier this year, but they had been sharing their pain and hurt with others for some time while she had closed herself away. She had been mourning her father for nine years. It was a long time to cherish grief, she thought, but Casta had been doing it since 1967—for forty-three years.

Questions about author pages

The first round of editing of Mine to Avenge is finally complete - all fifty chapters. I didn’t initially realize that there would be more than one, but my editor is very thorough. She wants to read it all through again to make sure nothing has slipped through or been overlooked.

I am also not sure now about my original decision for the cover. The publishers have made a darker toned version of the first cover at my request to choose between the two but it is very difficult to decide. I have shown it to some colleagues who have been evenly divided over which one they prefer.

I have also begun looking at on going marketing and promotional tools and the one at the top of my list at the moment that has been recommended is the Facebook author page (or book page). I am very appreciative of the many helpful articles I have been reading about these pages from more experienced and seasoned writers, but am still a little confused about the best time to set up such a page. Should I be doing it now and charting the journey to the novel on the time line, much as I have been doing with this blog? Should I wait until I have a cover design? Or should I wait until the book is actually out? And which is best - the author page or the book page - and why?

I think maybe the best way to find the answers to these questions is to explore some author pages and see how different authors have approached it. Please let me know of any well done author pages you know of - or even your own. I would love to learn first hand what works and what doesn’t.

Extract from Chapter 18 of Mine to Avenge

“The family business continued to flourish and all was well until late 1976, when Nicholas was nine years old and Theo was six. As youngsters, they were finely attuned, as children are, to the relationship between their parents. They could recognise tension, even though they didn’t know the cause, and they knew that tension meant things were not well, but that it didn’t usually last very long.

One day, the boys knew a tension that didn’t lift or go away. Their father suddenly became moody and withdrawn. He was over-anxious about Charis and the children, wanting to know where they were at all times, and panicking if they were out of his sight. At other times he was angry, easily losing his temper. He no longer took the boys to visit Spyridon at the travel agency, and the few times he needed to go away for a weekend on business the whole family went with him, or they were left in the care of other family members.

Theo remembered staying with Caterina once when Dymas was away during this time. He eavesdropped on his mother talking to Caterina, to try to make sense of what was happening. He heard them discussing Uncle Stepan. Nicholas and Theo never knew Uncle Stepan, as he had mysteriously disappeared before they were born.

In these conversations, Theo heard words like ‘sane’ and ‘insane’, and phrases such as ‘losing his mind like Stepan’. These words and phrases meant nothing to him as a six-year-old boy. He told Nicholas the things he overheard, and Nicholas tried to reassure his younger brother that all was well.

Later, when they were older, Nicholas told Theo that he had also overheard such conversations. Being older than Theo, he understood more of what was said, but wanted to spare his younger brother the worry.

Both of them, however, understood simple phrases such as, ‘When Stepan disappeared’, and questions like, ‘Have you thought about getting him to see the doctor?’

This gave them enough understanding to think that maybe their father was sick. They also concluded that whatever was wrong with him was the same thing that had been wrong with Uncle Stepan. They also heard Yia-Yia Caterina say that Papou Alcandor ‘went through the same thing’. This scared them, because they knew that Uncle Stepan was gone, and that Papou Alcandor eventually died.

This was a dreadful time for Nicholas and Theo. Charis did her best to reassure them that all was well, but it was difficult because she didn't believe it herself.”