@MargaretWestlie on Retirement, Writing and People Who Have Helped Her #AmWriting #Historical

Is your family supportive? Do your friends support you?

Now they do.  I get more encouragement from others outside the family than I do from family members.  That’s what the family I belong to is like.  I think it’s partly because they don’t really understand what it takes to conceive of and construct a novel.  Everyone thinks it’s easy when it is all consuming and demanding when I am in the creating phase.

Do you plan to publish more books?

I already have two others published and another one about to be published, then two more to go out this fall.  We are planning a local book launch, and a marketing campaign that is to begin this week (first week in May).  I have about eight others in manuscript form and two others that I am currently working on.

What else do you do to make money, other than write? It is rare today for writers to be full time…

We are retired and this is our second career.  I am very fortunate.  I never thought when I was working on novels that in retirement the writing would take off.  I never thought I’d be co-owner of a publishing company.  I never thought I’d have ten manuscripts ready for publication (three already published) and over 200 poems to my name.  For so long I was just a nurse doing the job that nurses do.  Mind you, I was doing it well and I enjoyed the patients but it was very tiring, and I was getting older and finding that I had less stamina, and a sore back from all the lifting.  When my husband said why don’t you retire, I can support the two of us, I took the chance and went on to study music, then got channelled into writing.

If you could study any subject at university what would you pick?

Probably clinical psychology, history or Womens’ literature.  When I passed my RN exams, one of the residents said that with grades like that I should have been a doctor.  If I had stayed in medicine I would have become a psychiatrist.  I think the human psyche is fascinating.    However that seems not to have been my path, and I went on to literature earning a Masters’ degree in English  with an emphasis on prose and poetry from UMKC.  I looked into going on  for a PhD, but their program was such that it required a double major and only some departments offered the kind of oversight in areas that would have been my choice.  It would have been more for interest’s sake than actually using the studies to further my career as a writer.  I already had all the tools I needed.

How do you write – lap top, pen, paper, in bed, at a desk?

I write prose at a desk on a laptop with a larger keyboard attached.  I write poetry in my blue chair with a pen on a leather clipboard that I have had since graduate days.  I love my clipboard.  It speaks to me of the wonderful world of imagination, imagery and juxtapositions of ideas, quirky and otherwise.

Where do you get support from? Do you have friends in the industry?

I get a tremendous amount of support from my husband.  He has always encouraged me and made it possible for me to go to graduate school.  My brother is also very good to cheer me on.  He keeps saying that Mattie’s Storyshould be turned into a play!  I also have friends who are very encouraging and a few writers who have become my friends over time.  One of my professors called three of us aside one evening after class and said:  “You three keep on writing.  You have what it takes.”  Wow!

Is there anyone you’d like to acknowledge and thank for their support?

I keep my thank you list up to date with cards and notes and acknowledgements in my books.

There are too many people who have helped me on my way and given freely of their time and advice and wisdom.  A few who have been especially helpful are Nancy Beth Guptill of Sweet Spot Marketing, Gary Ramsey, reference librarian at the Confederation Centre Library in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Patti Larsen, writer, Marilyn Russell, English Professor (deceased), my husband, John, who does the computer work and proofing for me, Lori Cheverill at Bookmark, an independent bookstore in Charlottetown.  Also Francis Warner of St.Peter’s College, Oxford, has been very encouraging and helpful. So many others.  I have been very fortunate in my mentors.

Every writer has their own idea of what a successful career in writing is, what does success in writing look like to you?

A career in writing means putting a new book out every year at least.  I hope I don’t run out of ideas.  I am meticulous about producing a finished novel so it takes me a few months to get it all the way I want it after the story is put on paper.

It is vital to get exposure and target the right readers for your writing, tell us about your marketing campaign?

We have been working with Nancy Beth Guptill of Sweet Spot Marketing for almost a year now.  She has guided us and taught us a lot of the ins and outs of successful on-line marketing.  We have just this month begun tweeting, blogging specifically on writing topics, and Facebooking.  I have been playing with the blog since last summer just to get the feel of writing one every week.  It’s not always easy to come up with topics.  I took a month or so off this spring because the weather had been so bad and all we were able to do was stay indoors and work.  We had about 15 feet of snow but there is only so much you can say about the weather and the day to day work of writing and publishing.

Tell us about your new book? What’s it about and why did you write it?

Anna’s Secret is the story about a murder in Lyndale, Prince Edward Island, that took place in the mid-nineteenth century.   Her name was Anne and the hollow where the murder took place is called Anne Beaton’s Hollow to this day.  The real story is that an ancestor of my own was the one who did her in with a turnip hoe.  He was acquitted and subsequently left the Island.  My uncle who told me the story said they ultimately decided that it was a woman who did the deed, and that it was crime of passion.  Anne was, as they used to say, “no better than she should be” and was said to have been having an affair with the woman’s husband.  I took the fact of her murder and fictionalized it.  I examined Anna’s relationship with her own husband, son, neighbours and friends and the impact it had on the whole community.  The ending that I created is pretty much unexpected and for reasons that no one in the fictional community guessed.

Anna Gillis, the midwife and neighbour in Mattie’s Story, has been found killed. The close-knit community is deeply shaken by this eruption of violence, and neighbours come together to help one another and to discover the perpetrator. But the answer lies Anna’s secret, long guarded by Old Annie, the last of the original Selkirk Settlers, and the protagonist of An Irregular Marriage. Join the community! Read Anna’s Secret and other novels by Margaret A. Westlie.

Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords

Genre – Fiction, mystery, historical

Rating – G

More details about the author

 Connect with Margaret Westlie on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.margaretwestlie.com

FLASH BANG #Excerpt by @KellenBurden #AmReading #Mystery #Thriller

In the dream they’re shooting at me. Rounds screaming past my face and popping around my head and I need to return fire, but my rifle’s empty, and my hands won’t work. They keep doing that classic fucked-up dream thing where I can’t coordinate my fingers to wrap around the magazine to jam it into place to slam the breech, bring the round home and bring the hate to the fuckers on the ridge line. I scream for Mullens to call in air support, but Mullens is down. Why Mullens? They weren’t aiming at Mullens. The one who shot him wasn’t aiming at all. Then it’s just me and McDowell. I shoot him in the face. My hands work now. When I wake up, my phone is wiggling its way off the milk crate next to the bed. I’m sweaty and my jaw hurts, like I’ve been grinding my teeth and I roll over and answer the phone like this:

“Huh?”

On the other end of the line, Etch says, “Parks, you sound like shit.”

Say “Fucker.”

Says, “Classy.”

I squeeze my eyes hard to clear the smoke, say, “What the fuck?”

Etch gets tired of my razor-sharp wit, says “He bit. It’s go time.”

I’m upright now, a start. And I’m naked. Not unusual. I’m alone, too, not exactly surprising either. I say, “Which one, and how long?”

“Brock Mason. Two hours from now. City Park.”

I’m out of bed, wander into the kitchen to load the French press with the heavy shit, saying, “You called Harkin yet?”

Harkin says, “I’m here.” But not on the phone. It takes me about six seconds to realize that he’s sitting at my kitchen table. He’s in full battle rattle, too. Fancy, all-white BDUs, tactical vest, ski mask, Bushmaster ACR with an ACOG scope mounted to it, and a Starbucks coffee in his hand. I’m still naked.

I say, “Sup.”

And he says, “Homo.”

And I blow him a kiss, turn the burner on under the kettle and wander back into my room.

Into the phone, I say: “Never mind, we’re good. I’ll be ready in five.”

Etch: “Let’s hook ’em and book ’em.” And I hang up before one of us screams yeehaw.

It works like this: We catch bad guys. Then we bring them to good guys who don’t have the manpower or skills to find them on their own. In the good old days, bounty hunters did that by carefully cultivating contacts and listening to the word on the street, and then simply knocking on doors and doing good, old-fashioned leg work. Unfortunately, that method is inefficient, outdated, and a really good way to get your ass shot off. You raise your enemies’ awareness of you by asking their friends where they are for days on end. Then you confront them in a place in which they are familiar, and attempt to take them somewhere they really, really don’t want to go. Our method is better; safer, easier and, 9 out of 10 times, funnier.

Brittany Hart is 5’6”, 120 pounds. She has blond hair, blue eyes, a knock-out smile, and a body that would make a Barbie doll gag herself. She was born in Detroit, Michigan, but moved to Denver, Colorado in March of 1998 for school. She majored in “gettin’ loose” before hitting the bricks in ’99 and working full-time at a club downtown. She likes FarmVille, Hooked on Colfax, and Jersey Shore. She is:

Headed to the park to spark up with an old friend, 15 minutes ago.

First you find your fugitive, someone stupid who has a vice that you can exploit, like multiple drug charges or sex offenses. Then, you find their Facebook page. Almost anyone under 40 has one (yes, even wanted fugitives), and almost all the ones over 30 don’t have the Internet-savvy to set their accounts to private.

Brittany Hart went to John R. Madden High School with Brock Mason. That’s where he thinks he knows her from. It’s a big school, especially for Michigan: 2,000 students and Brock doesn’t remember a fraction of the classes he took, let alone all the people he sat through them with. But Brittany Hart is a fucking fox, and Mason would pretend to remember anything she wanted if it meant breaking off a piece of that.

Then, you find several pictures of the same sexy girl on the Internet. You make sure that this girl is very far away. Somewhere like Russia, or Yugoslavia. Once you have enough pictures to make this girl look like an average, sexy woman of an appropriate age for your target, you create a fake Facebook profile for her. Fill in all the information, tailoring her identity to interest him in some way. If he went to a big high school, she went to the same one. If he used to work at the Target on 15th Street, so did she. From there, it’s all about making contact.

Brock Mason, according to his Facebook profile, is a full time hustla, in Da Streets of Denver. He lives with his auntie and her two grandkids somewhere near Federal Boulevard. He likes Kanye West, Real Thugz, and (believe it or not) FarmVille. He has hundreds of pictures of himself flashing gang signs, holding money, and posing with his shirt off in front of mirrors, a gangly white guy with tattoos slithering across his pasty body like leeches. Nowhere on his profile does it explain that he spent seven years in a federal penitentiary for aggravated assault. Nor does it state that he is wanted in Wisconsin, Wyoming, Nebraska, and right here in Colorado, for everything from possession with intent to sell, to sexual assault. It doesn’t say that there is a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest, either, or that he almost never leaves his auntie’s apartment except to pick up more liquor or to pop out for the occasional booty call. A booty call like Brittany Hart. Brock Mason is:

Hyped for today, 56 minutes ago, and Rollin’ out, 20 minutes ago.

Then you send him a message. Something innocuous but provocative, like, “Hey, stranger, long time no see ;).” (Idiots love emoticons.) If he answers back, you’re golden.

Brock Mason is walking through six inches of freshly fallen snow in the middle of City Park right now, steam pouring from his face like dragon’s breath in the frigid winter air. Brock Mason is at least 30 pounds heavier than his Facebook page says he is, and judging by the way he’s walking, he’s carrying a weapon in the front of his pants.

I put my gloved hand to the Bluetooth in my ear and whisper:
“Etch, target is inbound from St. Paul Street, moving northbound through the park.”

“Copy that, I have eyes on.”

Snow falls softly on the hood of my jacket, pattering like tentative fingertips all around my head, landing in my eyelashes, settling on my cheeks. The balaclava around my face keeps the steam from escaping and giving away my position. Mason trots nearer, sticking to the trail, and from where I lie I can make out the prison tattoos on his neck. He’s wearing a red snow jacket, black pants that are roughly four sizes too big for him, and a pair of red Nikes. He’s fatter, paler, and duller than his mug shot photos. Mason is thirty feet away from me now, looking left and right but still moving, intent on getting to shelter from the snow. I am a ghost, dressed all in white, packed into a snow drift in the shadowy gloom of the tree line.

After you’ve flirted with him for about two weeks, lure him to a controlled environment where he is both isolated and disoriented.

City Park is the biggest park in Metro Denver. There’s a zoo, a museum, and a lake scattered throughout it. At the edge of the lake on the southern shore is a gazebo, 100 feet long and 40 feet wide, with iron gates on either side, effectively enclosing the inside of the structure. It was built 98 years ago by some rich industrialist to function as a band shell. Now it’s used for weddings and parties. When it’s not being partied in, all of the doors are locked except for one at the western end, which the park leaves open so that joggers can use the water fountain. That’s where Mason is headed. He’s headed there because Brittany Hart asked him to meet her there so that they could “smoke some weed, and see what happens ;).” I know that because I am Brittany Hart. Well, we are Brittany Hart.

When you’ve got him horny, disoriented, and all alone, you and your ex-military buddies swoop in like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and wipe his ass out. Oh, yeah, join the military and make some friends. Simple as that.

“Subject entering the gazebo. Engage.”

I’m running now, up and running through the driving snow, with ice pluming off me in clouds. To my left I see Etch moving, too, diagonally through the trees, 12-gauge Benelli M1 Super on his shoulder, checking for hostiles. I see him only because I know where he is supposed to be, and even then it’s difficult to make him out. Harkin hangs back for support, further north, lined up with the building. As the edge of the tree line nears, I yank the FNP .45 from the holster on my hip and bring it to a ready position midway up my chest.

Harkin in my ear: “Subject has moved to the western end of the building. Be advised, subject is favoring a weapon, front waistband.”

Out of the trees, across the clearing, the building looms before us like a monolith. Etch and I converge on the eastern wall of the structure. There are no windows or doors on this side, so we’re covered for the moment. The wind howls, furious, and my legs are on fire from lying in the snow for so long, but I’m ready to do this, so I give Etch the signal and we split, Etch around one side, me on the other, around the corner sharply, and in the open gate. The wind outside the building is deafening, and Mason’s back is to me when I enter.

“Brock Mason.” My voice is steady, ice-cold mercury, and Mason’s shoulders rise infinitesimally in alarm. He does not reach for the weapon, so I don’t put a double tap in his spine. He turns to look over his shoulder. Brock Mason is:

Shitting his pants, 5 seconds ago.

I’m not a big guy, about 5’8” and lean, going on stocky; but I don’t know anybody who likes being on that side of a .45, especially when the person holding it is in full tactical with a ski mask on.

Mason says: “Fuck.”

“Mason: raise your hands out to either side and interlace your fingers behind your head. If you move for the piece I will light you the fuck up.” He considers his options for a millisecond, and then the arms go up.

“On your knees, Mason. Good. Now put your forehead on the ground. Flatten out.”

I move closer to him, watching him breathe heavily on the other side of my iron sights. Five feet away I say:

“Mason, I’m going to cuff you now. If you fight me, my friend will shoot you in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun.” On the other side of the iron bars, Etch appears like a ghoul and blows him a kiss over the breech of his weapon. Mason grinds his forehead into the floor. I holster my weapon, grab his right wrist and drop to a crouch, my knees on his neck and low back. Wrist, click, wrist, click and he’s done. I turn him over with my boot and yank a Taurus .25 from the front of his pants. Clear it, stow it.

“Harkin, subject in custody. Extracting to the tree line, move to cover.”

He says: “I’m at Taco Bell. Be there in like fifteen minutes.”

I tell him to fuck his own face.

We extract Mason from the park quickly and quietly. Harkin brings the van around, and the four of us are gone before anyone even knows we exist. It’s a short drive to our usual bail bondsman’s place of business. Etch phones ahead to tell Mark that the bust was good, and that we’re bringing Mason in. Mark says he’s just hanging around. Big fucking surprise. Mark’s an ex-Department of Corrections guy who got booted from his gig as a prison guard for smuggling dope into a correctional facility. After that, he decided to try his hand at putting shitheads in prison instead of keeping them there. Mark is a burly, lazy-looking S.O.B. A hulking white guy with a beer gut and a shaved head, teeth like a mammoth, forehead like a caveman. Like if Barney Fife had a baby with Chuck Liddell. We drop Mason off at the duplex Mark runs his gig out of, and he meets us at the door in jeans and a T-shirt. He says, “Cool.”

Mark gives us $5,000 under the table, three quarters of what Crime Stoppers is going to give him for the bust. We need Mark because:

a) The way we operate is pretty illegal.

b) The criminal justice system crawls as far as payment systems are concerned (six months to wait for five grand, and that’s if Mason gets convicted) and we are way too broke to wait that long.

Mark needs us because:

a) We bring him free bad guys.

b) He’s a piss-poor bounty hunter.

Two and a half hours later finds Etch, Harkin, and myself in the Goosetown Tavern. The snow is falling harder outside; flakes like cotton balls, falling heavily, lumbering on the breeze and settling on the sidewalks and in the gutters and streets. It’ll pile up by evening, freeze by night, melt in the morning and flood the gutters by tomorrow afternoon. Then it’ll freeze again. Fucking Denver. Beers hit the table with a splash, and the waiter stammers something about the pizza being on the way as he retreats from the table in reverse. No one’s surprised. We’re all wearing our tactical shit. The weapons are in the car, but you can’t blame the kid for being careful. Plus, Harkin and Etch look like comic book characters. The two huge fuckers with their shaved heads, John Harkin with his lumberjack beard, Eric “Etch” Echevaria with his goatee, 500 pounds of muscle, paunch, and sinew between the two of them.

The beer is cold and cheap, the way I like it, and I down it with fervor while the winter paces like a lion outside the windows.

Etch says, “So, what? About $1,700 each?”

About $1,660; but either way, it isn’t a terrible haul for a few hours’ worth of ninja shit and a few days on Facebook pretending to be a sexy blond. When Etch gets home he’ll wipe Britney’s profile and clean out his temporary Internet files so Mason can’t come looking for her, or us, when and if he gets to use a computer again. That’s the other reason we use pictures of girls in Russia; it’s not likely that one of these assholes is going to run into them at a bar anytime soon.

Etch wipes foam off his face with the sleeve of his coat, asks, “What’s the plan for your pieces?”

I’m spending mine on not starving or getting evicted from my apartment, say, “I’m going to buy a tiger with a saddle. Just for cruising around.”

Harkin says, “I’m going to buy a rocket ship, strap my girlfriend to it.” He makes a blast-off sound, trails a finger off into the cosmos. Getting rid of his girlfriend, Stacy, has been a running gag since their first date, and my theory that anyone crazy enough to go on a second date with Harkin is jacked in the brain still stands. Two weeks ago she got drunk and stuck Harkin with a fork because he “was asking for it.” He may very well have been, knowing Harkin; but still. Not a Nicholas Sparks novel in the making.

Harkin asks Etch what he’s got planned. He smiles, tips his mug at us and mumbles something like “soon,” and before anyone can ask what he’s talking about, the slices are on the table. Three of them, the size of kites, steam curling off like a naked flame, cheese running down onto the plate. The Tavern makes some of the best $3 pizza in the city, and I always order mine with pineapple and jalapeños because I’m a troll. It gets real quiet at the table. Etch and Harkin watch Man vs. Wild with the sound off on the flat screen above the bar, and I scoop the dismembered newspaper off the table behind us. Ads, ads, Big 5: box of 50 .40 caliber rounds for $15.99, Sports section, Opinion. Half a world away, people are charging checkpoints with dirty bombs strapped to their chests. No articles, no pictures, nothing. You can walk into any grocery store in America and find out what top J-Lo wore to the beach or who Ashton Kutcher is having sex with, but if you want to know who got their face shot off while brushing their teeth in a tent so that J-Lo or Ashton could keep rocking in the free world, good fucking luck. Your average teen can tell you the entire cast of the Jersey Shore, but has no idea where Afghanistan or Iraq is on a map. I swallow down the bitterness with my next bite. Buried beneath it all on the second page of the local section I find a two-paragraph article about some kid getting stabbed to death near The Stampede, a country-western bar in Aurora. Something about it bites me. Call it a premonition, call it gas. I read it twice, and can’t figure out what it is that feels wrong about it, turn the page, flip to the funnies. On the TV, Bear Grylls drinks his pee out of a snake.

Sebastian Parks is drowning in a flood of his own creation. Dishonorably discharged from the Army, he’s wracked with night terrors and an anger that he can’t abate. Unemployable and uninterested in anything resembling a normal job, Parks makes his living in fugitive apprehension, finding wanted felons on Facebook and thumping them into custody with his ex-military buddies John Harkin and Eric “Etch” Echevarria. When the body of a teenage Muslim boy is found in front of a downtown Denver nightclub Parks, Harkin and Etch are called on to do what they do best: Find bad men and make them pay. 

First-time author Kellen Burden serves up edgy humor, brutal action and characters you can’t get enough of. Flash Bang will keep you turning pages until the end.

Received “Honorable Mention at Los Angeles Book Festival 2014″

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Thriller, Mystery

Rating – R

More details about the author

Connect with Kellen Burden on Facebook

Steps Into Darkness (A Shakertown #Adventure) by @BensWoodard #YALit #Mystery

The unknown figure’s back was to them as he connected the wires to the detonator. Will shoved Tom. Only minutes remained.

They located the last connection point where the blasting caps were wired to two sticks of dynamite. The wires to the plunger snaked up the hill. The connecting strands were twisted, tightly, as with pliers. Tom snatched a rock, but Will grabbed his hand and pointed up the hill. Tom understood. The man would hear the pounding. They each took a twisted connection and tried to pry it apart with their fingers. They would need to break only one.

The wires resisted. Tom gritted his teeth, then remembered his pocket knife. He pulled it out, flipped the blade open, and wedged the tip between two strands. He twisted and the blade snapped. The sound startled the man. He whirled around and stared directly at the boys. Tom forced the broken blade into the gap in the wires. Will put his finger on top of one and pulled as Tom twisted. Blood ran down Will’s hand as the metal bit into his finger. They strained, and watched the man. His eyes darted in all directions. Then he made his decision. He pulled the plunger up, hesitated a moment, and slammed it down.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre - YA/Mystery

Rating – PG – 13

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Connect with Ben Woodard on Facebook and Twitter

Website http://BooksByBen.com

Dance For A Dead Princess by Deborah Hawkins @DeborahHawk3 #Mystery #Romance

PROLOGUE

Mid-April 2010, Paris

In the gray spring rain, he stood in the Place d'Alma staring down at the tunnel where she had vanished from his life on the last night of August 1997. He came here whenever he was in Paris. He counted the pillars until he reached number thirteen, the one that had taken her life. Tears formed behind his eyes, as they always did in this place. But he refused to let them overflow. Instead, he took a long breath of fresh rain mixed with the exhaust of cars speeding through the tunnel.

When the big black Mercedes entered its skid that horrible night, his last living link to Deborah had been taken from him. Diana and Deborah, West Heath girls, friends forever. Deborah had been dead since 1994, but he had lost her long before she became his wife, three years after he met her at Diana's wedding to the Prince of Wales in 1981. How many nights had he spent talking to Diana about his marriage, about her marriage, about his guilt over Deborah, and about the impossibility of being in love? Too many to count. He ached to tell her now how empty his life had become without either of them.

He stared down the long, gray tunnel, wondering as always what she had felt as she had slipped away from everyone who loved her. Had she struggled against it, as Deborah had? Or had her torn and broken heart quietly accepted its fate? No, he doubted that. She'd have fought to stay with her boys. Diana hadn't gone into death quietly. That January, she'd had a warning of what was coming. She'd recorded a video tape naming her assassins and had given it to someone in America for safekeeping. But she would never tell him who it was. Too dangerous, she always insisted. If you had it, they'd come after you, too. Leave it alone, Nicholas. The tape is safer out of England.

His phone abruptly interrupted with a text message from his assistant. He was late for a meeting of the Burnham Trust at the Trust's Paris headquarters, and everyone was waiting. Well, they could wait. All day and all night if he wanted. He was the Eighteenth Duke of Burnham and the second richest man in England after the Duke of Westminster, and he'd be late if he decided to be. He hadn't wanted to be a duke but having been forced into the job, he was going to enjoy every possible perk.

As soon as the news of Diana's death reached him, he'd vowed to find her tape and make it public. No luck for the last thirteen years, but his latest operative had just come up with a stellar lead at last. It was so stellar that not only was he pretty sure he was going to find the tape, he was also going to have the opportunity to unload the decaying family seat in Kent and exact his well-deserved revenge upon his father, the Seventeenth Duke.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Contemporary Romance,Mystery

Rating – G

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Connect with Deborah Hawkins on Facebook

Website http://deborahlhawkins.com/

Belinda Vasquez & the Book Signing That Never Was @MagicProse #AmWriting #Suspense

I was going to Phoenix one time with my husband for a reunion. Why not kill two birds with one stone, to use an old cliché, and set up a book signing? I had just published my first book, a kid’s chapter book.

I called up a Barnes and Noble store in Scottsdale. The store manager was too nice. “Why don’t you come up the month after instead? The store always declares that day as Teachers’ Saturday. It is a month before school starts, and the store gets very crowded that day. Teachers’ Saturday is always the very best time for a kid’s book signing, and we would love to have you. Your book looks so cute and educational.”

“But I’m in the area the month before. I’ll have to make a special round trip of 840 miles a month later.”

“We give the teachers a discount that day. I’m sure they will all want to buy your book to read to their classes. In the flyers to the schools, I will mention your signing.”

I cupped the receiver and told my husband excitedly. “We should go twice to Phoenix. She has assured me that I will sell a zillion books. Blah! Blah! Blah! Kiss. Kiss.”

There were hotel costs, restaurant bills, and gas, so I also booked a Borders book store in Tempe, and a Barnes and Noble in Tucson for a two-day whirlwind book tour. The store managers were all very nice, and said they would order my books for the signings.

We survived my husband’s reunion and a month later we were back in the Phoenix area.

On Saturday at the book store in Scottsdale, I sat there for two hours and about five people came into the store.

“I just don’t understand it,” the manager said. “I sent out all the flyers. I am so sorry no one has bought your book.”

I leaned over the banister, scanning the lone person in the store browsing the aisles. None of the five customers had even come upstairs to the children’s books.

“Here, let me buy a copy,” the manager said and yanked out a ten dollar bill.

I signed the book; my time was up; and we drove to Tucson.

The signing went better there.

The next morning on our way out of town, we stopped in Tempe for a few hours for my book signing. I had called up a cousin to let him know I would be at Borders and given him the address and time.

I waltz into the store, singing. “I’m here for the book signing.”

“What book signing?” the manager said.

“I set one up several months ago. Remember? I spoke with you.”

“Uh. Duh. Flubber. Drip drop. Sorry.”

“Let’s get out of here,” I told my husband.

On the way out of the Phoenix area I said, “Did you notice no one was at Borders? That store is really screwed up; I’m surprised it stays in business.”

The last thing Miranda ever expected was to see her brother’s ghost at the fallen Twin Towers.

It’s bad enough survivor Christopher Michaels scares her with claims that if one dies violently, his ghost will haunt the place that holds his name. And to top it all, one of those thousands of ghosts follows Miranda to her hotel. The only certainty is the ghost grabbing her under the covers is not Jake.

Their parents’ deaths separated Miranda from Jake when they were kids. Michaels insists Jake brought them together and it’s no coincidence that of thousands mourning at Ground Zero, it’s his best friend she bumps into. Some best friend. Michaels is more like a moocher. The cheapskate never has money, just a blood-stained wallet he broods over. Miranda has no choice but to hang out with the weird Michaels in order to unravel her brother’s past.

As Miranda spends time with Michaels, she begins to wonder who he really is. Against her better judgment, Miranda becomes emotionally entangled with Michaels, a bitter alcoholic with a secret linked to her brother and that blood-stained wallet.

I Will Always Love You is part mystery, suspense and romance, a novel that will keep the reader turning the pages!

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Genre – Suspense, Mystery, Romance

Rating – PG

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Website http://belindavasquezgarcia.com/

Message of the Pendant by Thomas Thorpe #Mystery #Historical #AmReading

The room was not completely dark. High above the floor, five window slits provided flickering bursts of light whenever distant lightning struck. Beneath dark wooden beams, flashes created menacing shadows that quickly disappeared until the next glimmer.

Huddled in a corner with her sister, Emily, the wait became excruciating for Elizabeth. Where was the stalker now?

A large stone fireplace under an antlered head of a stag stood at the far side of the room. She decided to edge over to the hearth and look for a tool or piece of wood which could be used against the blackguard.

On hands and knees, she carefully advanced along the room’s perimeter trying not to make any noise. Fifteen feet, ten feet, five.., she felt the bricks. She reached out for a poker, but had to settle for a two-foot log, three inches in diameter. Clutching her prize, she turned to start back. A new creak punctured the air in the middle of the room.

She froze.

Several English chairs and Queen Anne upholstered seats rested between game tables, turned at various angles to her sight. The sound had come from there. She stared at the outlines.

Lightning flashed again. To her terror, a dark figure rose behinda seat turned away from the chimney. Light disappeared before she could see anything more.

Elizabeth's mind raced, wondering if she had been heard.

Another flash. The figure had moved toward Emily’s corner.

“Emily! Emily!” she screamed. “Wake up. Someone’s coming toward you!”

She could hear Emily stirring, muttering words that made it clear she did not understanding their plight.  She had to help her sister! Her legs felt weak and a rush of panic welled up inside her. She could not move.

Glint came again. The figure had stopped.

William Darmon and wife Elizabeth were powerful figures who in 1818 set society's pace from expansive grounds known as Mayfair Hall. When a family member is murdered, a mysterious pendant is found containing a long lost request by Napoleon Bonaparte for an American mission to burn down Parliament buildings. The couple sets out on an action filled pursuit of the killer. While interviewing Henry Clay in post-war Maryland about the failed mission, they uncover evidence of a conspiracy to free the Emperor from exile. The Darmons infiltrate the cadre, but a shipwreck off the coast of Scotland, a firestorm at the Darmon's Manor and a harrowing assault on the Island of St. Helena loom before the mystery can be unraveled.

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Genre – Mystery, Historical, Thriller

Rating – PG

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Website www.darmonmysteries.com

Lazar’s Mission by Kevin Sterling @ksterlingwriter #Excerpt #Mystery #Suspense

Excerpt from Chapter Four

It was eleven fifteen, and there was no sign of Melati. She could have been late for a number of reasons, or a complete no-show for that matter, and Jack hoped it was the former. No doubt, fraternizing with the passengers was forbidden, or at least frowned upon. So the question was whether she had been sufficiently lured by Jack’s charm to break the rules. His stomach was in knots from the anticipation of seeing her, and he paced the floor of his suite like a caged animal.

Part of him was over-the-top excited to see her, play with her. But a voice of reason in the depths of his consciousness couldn’t help but speculate whether he was getting himself into trouble again. He just couldn’t see how.

Perhaps Jack was just channeling his Eastern mentor, Tasagi, who had not only been his private jujitsu and karate instructor for several years now, but over time had become a valuable spiritual guide as well. According to Tasagi, Jack was bringing dangerous situations to himself through a process called the Law of Attraction, and it was tied to his internal belief system. That meant Jack consciously believed he had chosen to involve himself with certain people or situations because of their reasonable appearance on the surface, whereas in reality his energy had attracted an underlying issue or conflict, and he didn’t recognize it until it was too late.

The problem was that Tasagi had him questioning everything now, including sweet Balinese girls, and he knew he had finally taken it too far. He knew there was nothing at all wrong with Melati, and he prayed he would soon hear her knock on the door.

In the meantime, he forced himself to stop pacing, and he reclined on the couch with a bottle of water to hydrate himself for what he hoped to be a spirited night.

To get more comfortable, he had changed into a loose-fitting pair of white drawstring linen pants with an aquamarine linen shirt and brown woven leather loafers sans the socks. After all, the ship was traversing the Mediterranean Sea toward the north coast of Africa, so an outfit leaning toward the tropical seemed most fitting.

Also, despite his earlier wine-opening announcement of eleven o’clock, he chose to uncork the bottle of Caymus Special Selection Napa Cab at ten and empty it into a decanter to let it breathe. The wine steward had thoughtfully included a pair of Spiegelau vinovino Cabernet wineglasses, and Jack knew the large, appellation-designed bowls would let the wine open up to its full potential.

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Genre – Action, Mystery, Suspense

Rating – R

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