Mulberry Seeds:
A Novella

It’s the summer of 1968, and little sisters Jolene and Corrine are struggling with big changes.   Their father’s lost job leads to a series of heartbreaking moves, each one further from the memories of their childhood home.  Alongside their father, who is becoming more withdrawn, and their mother, who is now constantly angry and afraid, they enter a new life marked by instability, loss, and hardship.

With little to count on, they find joy in daily adventures, security in family and friends who refuse to forget them, and strength in each other that they never expected. 

But can their newfound resilience withstand so much heartbreak?

Buy it now on Amazon https://a.co/d/cXyd8Kf 

Lisa-Behrens Smith has always been a writer.  After spending her high school years in Bakersfield, California, studying journalism and creative writing, she married, had children, and pursued a paralegal career until a change in her husband’s employment took her far from her expected life. 

Resettled in Santa Maria, California, she left the legal field to raise her children, pursued a degree at the local community college, and accidentally began writing again.  On graduation, she was awarded the Santa Barbara Foundation’s Edith Pillsbury Creative Writing Scholarship and was then accepted as a Regents Scholar into the literature program at the College of Creative Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.  

At the age of 40, and with encouragement from her husband, she moved into the student dorms over an hour away.  During the next few years, she studied, wrote, and won awards at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference before the sudden death of her sister retired her stories to a box in the back of her closet.  

Twenty years later, the box has finally been opened and her pen uncapped.  

Lisa-Behrens now teaches junior high English in Bakersfield, California.  She lives with her husband of 46 years, their difficult cat, and a mind filled with words.

Contact the author by email to lostiniv402@gmail.com 

Lisa and I met 20 years ago in the English teacher training cohort at Region XIII in Austin, Texas, circa 2006.  We never worked in the same schools, but we stayed in touch through district training and social media, both of us surviving the politics of teaching with giant helpings of sarcasm.  

I managed to escape the public school system and embraced the gig economy. I founded my tutoring business, started homeschooling my daughter, picked the occasional freelance proofreading job, and learned to shear sheep.

When I heard Lisa was working on a book, I insisted on being a beta reader.  She sent me her first story, and I sent her my thoughts and a few edits. The next thing I knew, we had the next several months booked with Zoom meetings, and I went from proofreader to book coach without knowing what I'd signed up for. 

Lisa's version of events:

"I came to know Emily as a voracious reader with an unmatched intellect for analyzing literature, so when I needed a book coach for the writing phase, there was no question who I would ask.  Even with a full-time (plus) life as a wife, mother, homesteader, homeschool teacher, and the sole tutor at Miss Emily’s School of Education and Enlightenment, she readily agreed and eked out time for coaching and emotional support during this project.   

Most people don’t have a clue how hard a job that is. Emily was tenacious in seeking revisions that, in the end, really mattered, sometimes leaving us both muttering and exhausted, but plodding on for the sake of the art.  

She gently chastised me when I lost a character’s voice or said I’d had enough, then quietly praised me when my writing was so perfect that it made her cry.  She spent countless hours reading and rereading and commenting, and then more hours in Zoom conferencing, going over the work word by word, line by line, until she could absolutely breathe every character I wrote.

She also listened to me beg for a deadline extension because grades were due, and all the tomatoes came on at once and needed to be canned, and I forgot about lesson plans, but the trees needed pruning.  Then she would say yes and ask for her own extension because she needed to work in a tutoring session or a riding lesson or get snakes out of the chicken coop or go to Florida to hand-shear sheep or maybe take a much-needed anniversary vacation.  For months, our real lives melded and intertwined in this magical imaginary world surrounding Corrine and Jolene.  

I thank you, Miss Emily, for all of it."