OUR STORY
Welcome home to GARNET HOUSE, where we publish quality literature in beautiful books and offer writing, editorial, and publishing services.
From conception through research and development to writing and editing, Lori handles everything from the big picture to the smallest details and delivers beautiful boxed screenplay packages and polished manuscripts.
Her stories are character-driven, with realistic dialogue and rich description, invoking emotion and provoking thought, often suspenseful, sexy and surreal. She does all research, and finds the story within the story as she works her magic.
IN HER WORDS...
A boutique publisher and bookseller when it began, GARNET HOUSE is the manifestation of an idea that came into being before we existed. 1905 is the year of the diary I have of my great-grandfather’s. At that time, Seward Erdman was a private physician for the Jenkins, a wealthy American family who contracted him to sail across the Atlantic to care for them in their home in Egypt and accompany them on their travels throughout Europe.
1905 is Seward’s story, and that is the title: 1905: Seward’s Story. Then I met H. And he took me home. When I realized the address was 1905 Garnet, I knew the ancestors were at play. Kind of hard to miss signs like that. It wasn’t just the number, but that it was 1905 Garnet.
The Jenkins' home overlooked a pyramid, and one evening Mr. Jenkins showed Seward the jewels he had taken from it… Yes! I kid you not. Including garnets! There is a 1905 garnet, and I believe I have it—in a bracelet I wore as a child. It is possible it came into the family through Uncle Huntington, who they called Uncle H. He was a miner and could have brought the garnet back from South America. Choose your own adventure. Either way, that was the beginning of GARNET HOUSE.
Lori Alayne Way, MA, MFA, BA
Writer & Publisher at Garnet House
a.k.a. Lucía Amarí Belmontéz
WAY BIO
A Canadian-American writer, Way grew up in the Canadian prairies before attending boarding school in Massachusetts and college in California. With her first career as a stay-at-home mom, she also always wanted to be a writer and, after finding her grandparents’ letters and diaries, returned to university to develop her writing in hopes of one day doing justice for their epic story.
In the process came another story, Finding Fortune, Way's debut novel under her author name for that book, L.A. Belmontéz. After earning a BA in English, Way continued with an MFA in Creative Writing. Then through an MA in Film Studies, she undertook research for her historic epistolary nonfiction series, with concentration on the atomic age and presenting the pacifist hero.
Way also writes screenplays and on contract for private clients, with a special interest in the life stories of mavericks, magnates, and millionaires. The chosen one by the living and the dead, Way is a voice for others as she writes about unsung heroes.
Related to Joseph Campbell and descended from writers such as Anne Bradstreet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and Jr., and Richard Henry Dana, Way is fascinated by the beauty of language, the power of story, and the Hero’s Journey.