Wednesday Special Spotlight
Shines On
The importance of flowers in our award winning book, Can’t Stop the Music. Written about a time when flowers were the rage.
With the 50th anniversary of the musical festival Woodstock coming up this August 15-18, we thought it would be a great time to talk about our book, Can’t Stop the Music, which begins at the famous Woodstock Festival August 1969. What better subject to talk about than flowers and flower children, since both were a big part of Woodstock.
Experts say, “Write what you know.” For us that advice often means flowers enter the stories we create. In our award winning book, Can’t Stop the Music, we tell the story of a flower child who encounters a magic tree while at the iconic Woodstock Musical Festival. The tree promises her the soul mate of her life.
In one of the scenes, the hero brings a bouquet of flowers to the heroine, Rose, similar to the one pictured above. The bouquet contains a red rose, daises, lilies, and a sprig of rosemary, because Rose’s full name is Rosemary.
Flowers have played an important part in our relationship. Catherine loves flowers and has a garden full of them, and Donald has always given flowers to her. Sometimes they arrive for birthdays and anniversaries and Sweetest Day. Sometimes she’s gifted posies for absolutely no reason at all.
He’s presented flowers to her a single bloom at a time, brought to the table by different restaurant servers. They’ve arrived at hotel lobbies while they’ve been out of town. He even made his fellow construction workers stop by the roadside while he cut boughs of forsythia (one of Catherine’s favorite spring-flowering bushes) to bring home to her. Catherine loves this story as she envisions the other manly construction workers giving her husband a hard time for being so romantic. The best part is Donald didn’t care one bit. He knew the armful of yellow blooms would melt his wife’s heart. Gotta love a guy like that!
With a flower history like ours, we just had to put a romantic nosegay in our nostalgic romance book, Can’t Stop the Music, where a flower child of the 60s gets her own beautiful bouquet.
Can’t Stop the Music is book number 2 in the Soul Mate Tree collection. The collection has 12 books, each written by a different Soul Mate Publishing author. The sensual to steamy romance books, which span a range of genres and settings, revolve around an ancient, magical tree that grants needy persons the soul of their lives.
The Soul Mate Legend says:
It’s an ancient legend spanning eras, continents, and worlds. To some, it’s nothing more than a dream. To others, a pretty fairy tale handed down through the generations.
For those in critical need of their own happy ending, a gift.
For college senior and hippie wannabe Rosemary—Rose for short—a teaching job is within her grasp, but she wants more. She wants love, the kind of love that has bound her parents for so many years. When she’s dumped by her current boyfriend because her morals can’t bring her to give in to free love, she finds herself at Woodstock in the middle of the biggest free-love, music festival of the Sixties. Alone, again. Until a magical tree grants her wish and she finds the man of her dreams—and loses him before she really knows who he is.
Dakota meets the girl of his dreams at Woodstock, but a jealous wannabe girlfriend drives them apart before he can discover Rose’s last name and where she comes from. After he sees a disappearing tree that promises him true love, a frantic search to find Rose comes up empty-handed.
Short Excerpt:
In his hand he held a bouquet of mixed flowers containing a single red rose, some white daisies, a couple of lilies, and a spike of pungent rosemary.
He held them out to her. “You weren’t wearing flowers in your hair at Woodstock, so I wasn’t sure what kind you liked. I hope these are okay.”
“They’re beautiful.” Waving him inside, she took the blooms from him. “How sweet of you.”
“I thought flowers for my flower child, Rose, were appropriate.”
His footsteps behind her stopped, and she turned. He stood staring at her Woodstock collage.
“This takes me back.” He tapped the glass over the Woodstock ticket. “This ought to be worth money someday.”
“Too many memories attached to sell those mementos.”
He closed the gap between them and embraced her, holding her close. “Remember when I held you in my arms at Woodstock?”
She giggled. “Technically, one arm. You held up your guitar case with the other as we slid down the hill.”
“I didn’t tell you then, but holding you felt right. Still does.”
She lowered her head. He tipped her chin up until she gazed at him.
“This date has been a long time coming, Rosemary.” Then he kissed her.
For a second she didn’t move. Then as his kiss deepened, she fell victim to its power. Her arms wrapped around his neck, the fragrance of rose, lily, and rosemary swirled around them as the bouquet rested against his back. After what seemed an eternity, he released her.
“I should get these flowers in water before the heat of passion wilts them.” And me.
Want to read more? Can’t Stop the Music is available on Amazon.
C.D. Hersh 