Cassie Exline -- Romance and Mystery

Don't Look Back, Agnes by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

2012-01-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

Dear readers, please welcome Kathryn Meyer Griffith. She's going to share the back stories to Don't Look Back, Agnes and In This House her newest release. I don't know about the rest of you, but the both titles make me want to lock the doors and grab a blanket. Let me just say, I wasn't disappointed and loved them both.

The Story Behind Don't Look Back, Agnes and In This House

More Backstories

By Kathryn Meyer Griffith

You Tube Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3q9rZryFMo

Eternal Press Buy Link: http://www.eternalpress.biz/people.php?author=422

The older I get, the more I like to reminisce and write about what I’m going through at any particular time. I guess it’s an age thing. So many of my stories and novels come about because of what I’m actually experiencing in my real life at the time. Not all, but some.

But my novella, Don't Look Back, Agnes is definitely one such story.

At the end of 1998 my beloved father, the very heart (along with my mother’s mother, Grandmother Fehrt, who was also much loved) of my large family, passed away after a short but heartbreaking battle with lung cancer. He’d been a cigarette smoker his whole life so it wasn’t a complete shock that it ended up killing him. Yet the suddenness and the swiftness of his departure devastated my six siblings, my mother, grandmother, and me. It was a very dark time for us.

To complicate the matter, my brothers and sisters, myself included, were in our forties and working hard at our lives, our families and jobs, but my grandmother and mother were left living alone together and neither one drove; so both needed constant care and attention. My grandmother was in her eighties and my mother in her late sixties; though my grandmother was fairly healthy (she was spunky lady, with a zest for life, who’d emigrated from Austria as a child) my mother was already in a wheelchair, crippled from bad ankle surgeries, debilitating osteoarthritis and a host of heart related problems.

The first thing the family had to do was move them into town, nearer to some of us, and out of the country where they’d been living in the new sprawling house my father had built them just the year before. It was too hard caring for them way out there and the house was too big, too expensive. Boy, that was fun. They had so much stuff, so many memories to dispose of and cry over. We settled them in a small ranch house in town and life went on. Or tried to.

Now, I loved my mother and grandmother dearly but taking care of them was often difficult. Each needed concentrated care, love, endless visits to the doctor, prescriptions fulfilled and, as time went on, housekeeping and grocery shopping help–and finally, someone to do their bills, my mother becoming too disoriented and sick to any longer do any of those chores. For a long time, years, my grandmother stepped up, even at her age, and became my mother’s constant nurse and helper. Their two Social Security checks combined were just enough for them to live on. It was a thin line they had to tread and we tried to help them every step of the way.

So, with love, sometimes desperation, and some bickering every so often between us siblings as to who would do what when, we took care of them and their whole household, their house. There were many late night runs to hospital emergency rooms, or long stays, and rehab centers for my mother, who steadily over the next nine years grew worse. By the end of 2005 it seemed we were always at the hospital with mom or grandma. My mom had her heart troubles, high blood pressure and medication problems, and my grandmother broke her hip. One thing after another. It was exhausting at times. Who’d ever think two sick old ladies could need so much care?

Then my grandmother got really ill and was rushed to the hospital. She needed emergency surgery and afterwards was in intensive care for a month…never recovered…then sadly joined our grandfather in the next life. We were all so broken hearted.

That left our mother, all alone, without enough money to live on (her Social Security meager; no savings), and unable to care for herself or her three cats. Born an only child, she was a demanding sort of woman, almost childlike in her unending need for attention and devotion. She was terrified of going to a nursing home so the family did what we could to keep her in her own home as long as possible. My brother got her a reverse mortgage on her house and we all chipped in financially whenever and however we could. We fought the good fight but there came a day where mom got so sick, was rushed to the hospital so often, needed so much constant supervision, that my siblings and I had to admit defeat…mom had to go into a nursing home or one of us had to move in with her, which wasn’t feasible. We were married with families.

So a nursing home it was. We picked out a newly opened one in town, the nicest we could find, and the next time mom got sick we moved her into it for her recovery. Then told her the truth. The house was up for sale and the cats had been placed in new homes. I even took one, Patches (the cat in the story), because it was old and no one wanted her. My husband and I already had two cats but it was something I had to do…for mom. She really loved that cat as she’d really loved her home. But poor Patches, probably pining for her mistress and her old life, only lasted five months. I lied to my mother for months afterwards, afraid to tell her that the old cat had died (mom had always said that when Patches died, she’d die) and it broke my heart when I finally had to tell her. Mom had come to our house for a family Thanksgiving and I couldn’t hide the fact that Patches was no longer there. Oh, that was hard. Telling her.

If anyone has ever put a parent or relative into a nursing home, they know the heartbreak it causes all around. My mother was inconsolable and my guilt was awful. But, as sick as mom had become, with so many prescriptions each day, hospital visits, and how most days she couldn’t even get out of bed or get to the bathroom, clean or feed herself…we had no choice. She stayed in that nursing home – although it was a bright cheery place with kind people running it – until she died two years later. The hardest two years of my life. I visited her often, shopped for her and kept her company. Decorated her room so it looked like a home. Brought her special lunches and little gifts. Fancy quilts and stuffed cats. It still broke my heart.

I began writing the novella, Don’t Look Back, Agnes, while she was there. A ghost story centered around a young woman who’s forced by grim circumstances into returning to her haunted, and deadly, childhood home because her mother is ill in a nursing home and needs her. Looking back now, I can see it was also my way of dealing with the nursing home guilt…of wishing for a different ending to mom’s life than what had occurred. Writing the story was my therapy. I cried all my sorrow out into those words and prayed to be forgiven for putting my mother into such a place.

Even In This House, the bonus short story included because it’s also a ghostly tale, deals with old age and the passing of all a person (or a couple in this instance) ever knew or loved as time and their lives slip away, as it must always do. At the same time I was writing the Agnes story I read an article in the newspaper about this old man who was the last resident of a neighborhood that had been systematically bought out and emptied by an iron smelter plant. He was the last one living there in the last house. He spoke of his loneliness since his wife had died; about her. Their past. It sparked the idea for In This House. Both stories deal with responsibility, sacrifice and…love. Love for a mate, for an aging parent, children, and a way of life or the loss of one’s independence that we all in the end have to relinquish in one way or another. Life’s sorrows faced with a brave smile to cover the tears.

I hope the two stories help anyone going through what I was going through in those difficult years. If they do, then the words have done their job.

Written by the author Kathryn Meyer Griffith this nineteenth day of December 2011

****

My books (most out again from Damnation Books and Eternal Press): Evil Stalks the Night, The Heart of the Rose, Blood Forge, Vampire Blood, The Last Vampire, Witches, The Nameless One short story, The Calling, Scraps of Paper, All Things Slip Away, Egyptian Heart, Winter's Journey, The Ice Bridge, Don't Look Back, Agnes novella, In This House short story, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons, The Woman in Crimson, The Guide to Writing Paranormal Fiction: Volume 1 (I did the Introduction) ***

The Writing of The Ice Bridge by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

2012-01-04T11:58:00.000-08:00

Dear readers, help me welcome Kathryn Meyer Griffith. She's visited with us before and is going to share the back story to one of her awesome novels. The cover is awesome and chilling. (As soon as I read this I bought the book on Amazon.)

The Writing of THE ICE BRIDGE

ETERNAL PRESS LINK:http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615725182

YOU TUBE BOOK TRAILER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28HZqu-my1g

By Kathryn Meyer Griffith

November 7, 2011

Eight years ago my husband, Russell, and I were celebrating our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and decided to return to quaint Mackinac Island in Michigan. We’d been there a few years before, but just for a quick afternoon stopover on our way home from visiting family in Wisconsin. We’d loved the Island for the few hours we’d been on it and promised ourselves we’d go there again someday. So when we began to plan for our anniversary vacation we traveled back for a longer stay of six days. I’d made reservations months ahead at the Iroquois Hotel on the water’s edge of Lake Huron and when the time came, after packing up everything we’d need, we jumped in the car and took off.

The Island doesn’t allow cars, only bicycles, horses and snowmobiles (in the winter) so we left our vehicle in a Mackinaw City parking lot on the mainland and boarded the ferry that would take us across the water to the Island, our luggage and two bicycles in tow. It was much cheaper to bring our own bikes instead of rent them there.

It was late August and the Island was beautiful. Crowded with colorful, fragrant flowers, clomping horses, whizzing bicycles and, of course, lots of tourists. Fudgies as they were called because they came, purchased and devoured so much of the little town’s fudge.

The Iroquois Hotel was lovely with its bright pastel colors and friendly service; a fancy in-house restaurant and our room with its wall of windows facing the lake. A lake that to me was as large as an ocean…because it went on forever.

Our six days there were heaven. We rode our bikes, peddling around the horses, carriages, and equine taxis, around the eight-mile in circumference island and enjoyed the sights. The friendly people. The breathtaking views of water, boats and woods. The fudge. We sped along West Bluff Road to the ritzy Grand Hotel (made famous in the 1980 romantic time travel movie Somewhere in Time with Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve), ate the scrumptious and lavish tourists’ brunch there and afterwards, so full we could barely ride our bicycles, we gawked at the magnificent Victorian mansions with their elaborate gardens lining Lake Shore Drive.

We visited Fort Mackinac and listened amusedly to people talk about the ghost soldier some had reported seeing when twilight began to fall. My husband, a photography buff, even slipped out of our hotel room in the middle of one foggy night to get artsy pictures with our new digital camera of the fort, hoping to catch the ghost. He captured no ghost, but plenty of stunning photographs.

One night we even sat, spellbound, as a Lake Huron thunderstorm pounded wildly at our wall of windows. It was as if we were gazing at a tumultuous ocean.

Then one day someone, in a cubbyhole of a local hamburger joint, over our lunch, said something about the ice bridge, as the islanders called it. During the dead of winter, when the straits froze over, it was a narrow path that stretched about four miles across the ice that separated Mackinac Island from the St. Ignace mainland. The locals would drive in old Christmas trees along the path to show the way, to show it was now safe. To them the ice bridge meant freedom to come and go for up to two months a year without paying ferryboat or airplane fees. To me it sparked an idea for my next book…what if someone crossed the ice bridge one wintry night and fell through the ice? And disappeared…maybe even died?

I started asking questions of the locals: Had someone ever fallen through the ice and perished? Turns out over the years, that yes, some people actually had. Fallen in. When the ice wasn’t firm enough. Or when they’d gone off the solid marked path. Or in a snowstorm. Some on snowmobiles. Some were saved, dragged out, and some had not been. Hmmm.

That’s all it took for the book to begin forming in my head. The rest of the trip I looked at the Island with different eyes. A writer’s eyes. Writer’s ears. I filed away the memories and the home-grown stories recounted to me. Though most of my earlier books were romantic horror, I’d written a couple of straight contemporary murder mysteries, Scraps of Paper and All Things Slip Away, a few years before and Avalon Books had published them. I’d quite enjoyed writing them.

So I thought I’d write another one with Mackinac Island and its real and fictional ghost tales as the background. I’d show the beauty of the island, changing of the seasons, what it was like in summer, fall and winter (tons of snow and ice), and describe the historical landmarks. I’d spotlight the quirky close-knit inhabitants and have the protagonist gather their imaginary spirit stories to put into the ghost book she was writing. I’d make the Island nearly a main character itself with its enigmas, water, snow, ice and fog.

The novel would be about a woman, Charlotte, jilted in love, coming back to heal and visit her poignant childhood playground, and her lonely Aunt Bess. She’d meet an Island cop, Matt, and together they’d not only fall in love but would embark on a great dangerous adventure together. There’d be a spunky old lady, Hannah, living next door and the four would be great friends. Until the old lady disappears on a winter’s night while crossing the ice bridge and the mystery would begin. Had Hannah been murdered by someone….how exactly…by whom…and why? The remainder of the book would be the unraveling of that mystery as the central characters try to keep from being killed themselves by the devious murderer behind Hannah’s death. I’d embed the Island’s so-called ghost tales throughout the book to spice up the story even more. So it’d be a romantic ghostly murder mystery. Ah, ha. I couldn’t wait to begin.

When my husband and I returned home, refreshed and happy, I started it right away, with the memories of lovely Mackinac still fresh in my mind. Gosh, how I’d loved that Island. A tiny piece of old-fashioned paradise. The book came easily to me. And so The Ice Bridge was born. Now with a stunning new cover by Dawne Dominique and edited by my publisher, Kim Richards Gilchrist, it’s out in the world for everyone to read and, I hope, enjoy.

Written this day of November 7, 2011 by the author Kathryn Meyer Griffith

*********************************************************************

Kathryn Meyer Griffith has been writing for nearly forty years and has published 14 novels and 8 short stories since 1984 with Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press in the horror, romantic paranormal, suspense and murder mystery genres. Learn more about her at www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG and http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

Her published novels & short stories:

Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure 1984; Damnation Books 2012)

The Heart of the Rose (Leisure 1985; Eternal Press Author’s Revised Edition 2010)

Blood Forge (Leisure 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out Februry 2012)

Vampire Blood (Zebra 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out July 2011)

The Last Vampire (Zebra 1992; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition 2010)

Witches (Zebra 1993; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition 2011)

The Nameless One (short story 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions;

Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition 2011)

The Calling (Zebra 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out October 2011)

Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery 2003)

All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery 2006)

Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007; Author’s Revised Edition 2011)

Winter's Journey (The Wild Rose Press 2008; Author’s Revised Edition 2011)

The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press 2008; Author’s Revised Edition 2011)

Don't Look Back, Agnes short story (2008; ghostly short story Eternal Press Jan. 2012)

In This House (ghostly short story 2008; Eternal Press January 2012)

BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (Damnation Books June 2010)

The Woman in Crimson (Damnation Books 2010)

The Complete Guide to Writing Paranormal Novels: Volume 1 2011 (I wrote the Introduction) ***

Daily Cheap Reads

2012-01-04T11:49:00.000-08:00

For all you Kindle lovers, check out Daily Cheap Reads Every day and throughout the day, the lovely ladies at Daily Cheap Reads post books. Some are free, some for 99 cents and some cost more. Different genres. Fiction and Non-Fiction.

You can sign up for email notices every day, but I can't wait and check often every day for the next offer.

Please welcome the awesommer Sommer Marsden

2011-10-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

It's my pleasure to welcome back a very dear friend, Sommer Marsden, to promote her latest release — Big Bad. She was here not too long ago to promote her Zombie series and has returned just in time for Halloween, to share with us her latest creation about vampires. Let me warn you, after I read the excerpt for Big Bad, I immediately purchased a copy. Perhaps Sommer is part witch.

Take it away, Sommer:

Missing In Action

I don’t know if it’s normal or even rational to do so—but I really missed my characters when this book was done. I wrapped up BIG BAD and my time with Ruby, Ellis, Tyler and Peabody felt far from done. So I took a week off and then I went and I wrote the sequel. To find out what my missing in action characters had been up to.

Unheard of for me. Very heard of for other writers, but not so much for yours truly. The zombie books and the Seekers series don’t count for one reason: they are pretty much a long serialization in my head. They’re one long story told in pieces. But BIG BAD felt like a full story told. But hey, hunh, go figure…still more to say.

So I put my writer’s hat back and dove back in. Long Lost, the sequel will be out in December.

Maybe it’s wrong to fall for characters that hard. Maybe it’s abnormal *cough* to miss people who don’t exist. But hey, as Popeye said: I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam.

And what I yam is mentally prepping to pimp the next and final (maybe…probably…surely!...mostly) tale of Ruby and Ellis.

XOXO

Sommer

Excerpt from BIG BAD by Sommer Marsden

I took a shower, standing in the heat and steam and wondering if I had been stupid to take Tyler at his word. He was a guy, after all. And hot-headed, possessive and even petulant on occasion. It was part of why I loved him. Being a vampire didn’t cool that part of his nature any, but he wasn’t over the top about it.

“Which is why you took him at his word and went ahead and dove head first into your natural lust for him, you dipshit,” I scolded myself. The water blazed super hot and outside I heard a crack of thunder. Odd to have a thunderstorm this late in the season. I climbed out, because being electrocuted was not on my To-Do list for today.

Rain beat the windows and inside of me a pulse seemed to beat in time with the weather. I could feel the sex and the orgasms’ ghosts deep in my pussy. The bite on my back beat in time with my cunt and my heart. They were already healing. Most of the bites from earlier were already gone. I’d have to ask Tyler about that.

I wiped the steam from the mirror and stared at myself. My own blue eyes, my own dark blond hair. I spotted a few silver strands mixed in with the brown and platinum. Truth be told, I didn’t mind. “So this is what I look like.”

The words startled me. More than the words, though, the ease with which that unanticipated sentence rolled off my tongue.

I touched my reflection. My pale eyes, my wet hair, my lips. I closed my eyes and thought of Ellis. How close he had been. That kiss. The feel of his hard cock pressed to my split and the feel of his heart banging against my chest. Part of me marveled that I’d been able to fend him off after wanting him for this amount of time.

I blew out a sigh that sounded shuttering and weak even to me and put my hair up in a towel. I tied my pale lavender kimono tight and opened the door. To Ellis Bach.

“Jesus Christ on a cracker you scared the shit out of me,” I yelled.

He flinched but laughed softly too. “I’m out of sausage. I came to see if you had some.”

I blinked, feeling stupid and flustered and buck naked despite the silk that barely covered me. “The store is closed,” I said dumbly.

He hooked his hand in the soft pale belt and tugged so I staggered forward a bit. “Maybe you have some. In your fridge or something.”

Great. First I had sex and dinner with a vampire. Now the wolf had shown up for a late night snack.

It wasn’t hard to let my mind trip back through earlier in the day on our walk. It was very easy to feel his skin and his breath on me. And now with his hand trapped in the belt of my robe and the invisible sparks of energy shooting off of him—that I could feel everywhere—I wanted him with an almost violent urgency

So I stepped back. He grinned and I studied the gingery brown stubble along his cheeks and jaw. His hair was the color of honey in the sun, dark and light and red at times. It was no particular color of hair and I wanted to push my fingers into it and feel the thick unruly waves under my fingers. He kept it much shorter than Ty’s but not too short and I imagined what it would be like to tug that hair while he went down on me.

My nipples pebbled under my clothes and my throat made a little gaspy noise before I could stifle it.

“I can smell how much you want me,” he whispered. “So don’t be embarrassed. I can smell it as surely as I could smell you in the shower all hot and slippery from the water. The water and the heat accents your natural smell. Like baking a chicken makes the house smell good.”

“Are you comparing me to poultry?”

“Maybe, innocent little bird. You have to be careful for wolves,” he chuckled.

Ellis was fast and he pressed his pink lips to my lips. I went stiff and then kissed him back hungrily. I could worry about my nerves later. I held his huge shoulders and pressed myself to him, realizing that one man had just left and here I was kissing another.

But I felt no guilt. Why should I? This was what I wanted and it was okay. There was no one there to tell me that it wasn’t.

“You smell confused.”

“You need to stop smelling me.”

Ellis wrapped his hands around my waist and tugged me in. He buried his face to the place where my neck met my shoulder and inhaled deeply. It made me tingle and I shivered against him, feeling his hot breath on my cooling skin. “But you smell so good,” Ellis said, his mouth pressed to my skin as he spoke.

I relaxed into his embrace, taking in his scent now. Feeling the intense heat that radiated off of him and warmed the front of my kimono. “God you’re hot.”

“Thanks. You’re pretty sexy yourself.”

I snorted. “I mean heat, heat. Like hot to touch.”

“Metabolism thing. We burn hotter and faster than most. Unlike your chilly friend.”

I pressed my hand to his hard chest, feeling his heart galloping under my palm. He was excited. The heat that warmed my fingers was intense. Like touching a wood burning stove. I wondered what that would feel like naked flesh pressed to naked flesh.

“I could show you, ” he said, cocking an eyebrow.

“What?”

“I could show you what you were just wondering. All you have to do is take off that silly little bit of silk and I can show you how hot I feel against you.”

“How did you…are you…”

“Psychic? No, little bird. But I am good at reading expressions and yours had dirty written all over it.”

Heat flooded my cheeks and I pushed past him. “Let me check on that sausage.”

“Oh you leave me open for a good sausage double entendre,” Ellis growled.

“And hopefully you won’t take it since you’re not oh…fourteen.”

“Come on, Ruby. All males are fourteen at heart.”

Blurb for BIG BAD by Sommer Marsden

Lust according to Ruby:

You read those books where they explain it all away. They make it fine with rationalization. But what if I just want to? What if that's my whole reason? My life is not a romance novel. I don’t need justification. I’m a grown woman who knows what she wants.

I want Ellis. And I want Tyler.

And I won’t apologize...

What’s worse than wanting both your best friend who’s a vampire and the just-back-in-town alpha werewolf you find yourself fixated on? Finding out that the werewolf in question wants you, too. But he isn’t too keen on the sharing part. Oh, and by the way, you’re his dead mate.

Okay, okay, dead is harsh—reincarnated.

What’s worse than that? Realizing that you believe the whole crazy tale of reincarnation. Because it seems to be true.

And yet you still want them both—together. Vampire and werewolf and you in the middle. Stuck between two predators who want you and only you. To complicate it all, you find out that you can have it. With your new/old mate’s blessing. But just one time before he claims you as his.

Are you brave enough to take it? That one shot?

Well...Are you?

Warnings: This title contains graphic sex and language, spanking, m/f/m sex, multiple partners.

BUY LINK at EXCESSICA:

http://www.excessica.com/books/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=22&products_id=463

Book of the Day on Author Island

2011-10-19T02:39:00.000-07:00

Aloha! Welcome to Author Island

HERE'S TODAY'S BOOK OF THE DAY

OPAL'S DISAPPEARANCE by CL Exline

A Sheryl Locke Holmes Mystery

An old college friend begs Sheryl to help find her missing cousin, Opal, who may have been kidnapped by a mysterious mountain man.

When all leads are exhausted, Sheryl concocts a dangerous plan - she becomes bait for the kidnapper and alleged murderer.

But will she survive her plan? Or is this Sheryl's last mystery?

BUY THE eBOOK *** READ THE EXCERPT

WIN - To get your name in the hat for a free download of today's book of the day, read the excerpt to find out who is Sheryl's number one suspect. Email your answers to AuthorIsland at yahoo.com, along with your name and address if the prize is a print book or your email address if the prize is an ebook. Please put "Book of the Day" in the subject line. And don't forget to check back to see what great book we have up for grabs as tomorrow's BOOK OF THE DAY!!

An Excerpt from: Sheryl Locke Holmes: Book 3: Opal's Disappearance

When Sheryl spotted Dot, she stopped so fast that Brian bumped into her. “Dot, sweetie, open your eyes.”

“No. Shoot him.”

“I’m not sure, but I think tree season is over,” Brian said.

“Huh?” Dot opened her eyes and frowned.

“Your hood is caught on a branch.” Sheryl hurried to get Dot loose. “No one has you. You’re safe.”

“You’re kidding?” Dot tried to turn around, but the branch held her firm in its grasp. “I was so sure that mountain man had me.”

“I thought Lucas had you.” Sheryl put her gun away and freed Dot.

“Speaking of Lucas, where is he?” Brian looked around. “He should have been with you.”

Dot pointed toward a pile of brush. “He went over there to check something out, and I waited here.”

They heard a moan, and Lucas staggered toward them.

“Lucas! Were you attacked?” Dot rushed to him.

“No. I was picking some flowers and tripped over a stump. When I heard you yell, I jumped to my feet and whirled around so fast I ran into a tree or into something. Hit hard enough it knocked me to the ground.” Lucas had a big knot on his forehead. Leaves and debris clung to his hair, shirt, and pants.

“You’re a sight.” Sheryl laughed.

“What were you doing picking flowers?” Brian asked.

Lucas’ face turned crimson. “Well, uh, I... uh, it seemed the right thing to do.”

Dot brushed off Lucas’ back.

“Let him alone, and we’ll get back to canvassing the area.” Sheryl grabbed Brian’s arm, and they returned to their starting point.

“Don’t rush me, woman.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you’d walk faster.”

By the time Sheryl and Brian met up with Dot and Lucas again, Dot was wearing flowers in her hair. The four searched for over two hours, but found nothing. Not even a cigarette butt.

“Well, I’m disappointed,” Sheryl said.

“Does this mean Cindy is a suspect?” Dot asked.

“She’s moved to the top of the list.”

Buy Now!

Join me on my Oct-Opal Fest Blog Hop

2011-10-11T08:24:00.001-07:00

Opal's Disappearance became available for purchase Tuesday, Oct. 11 from Wild Child Publishing. To celebrate the launch of the third book in the Sheryl Locke Holmes Mystery Series, I'm doing an Oct-Opal Fest Blog Hop. Please follow me on my journey. Stalkers fascinate and scare me. Look I have chills already.

Let the List begin:

Chris Redding -- Oct. 6

Four Strong Women -- Oct. 10

Wild Child Blog -- Oct. 12

Starla Kaye -- Oct. 13

Emmy Ellis -- Oct. 17

Sarah Ballance -- Oct. 20

Raine Delight -- Oct. 22

Elaina Lee -- Oct. 24-25

Long And Short Review (LASR/WC/GT Haunting Halloween Blog Fest) -- Oct. 30

Goddess Fish Promotions Party Pavilion (Haunting Halloween Blog Fest) -- Oct. 30

Welcome Terry Odell

2011-10-02T16:01:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited to have as a special guest -- mystery writer -- Terry Odell. During one of my usual sleuthing of sites for something to read, I discovered a new author. Okay, new to me, but not any more. The story that got my attention was called On The Other Side of the Page. To quote Terry, "A tongue-in-cheek look at the other side of writing." As an author, you'll love it. Boy did it ring true for me. And as a reader, you'll understand a bit more about writers and our wacky thought processes. Great story.

Anyway, I was hooked and had to had the entire series that featured lovable characters Sarah and Randy, which means the main books Finding Sarah and Hidden Fire.

Lucky for all of you, Terry has also bundled together a collection of short stories into an anthology entitled Finding Fire, which includes On The Other Side of the Page.You'll learn about Sarah before Randy and what happened after Hidden Fire. A must have collection. Of course, I'm selfish and I want more. Which is good because she has another series for me to read.

Okay, I’ve prattled long enough. Terry, tell us about yourself.

What do you come up with first in starting a story: Title? Characters? Plot? Setting? Conflict?

Characters, then conflict (actually, those go hand in hand, so they build off each other. Then plot, which grows from the characters and their conflicts. Title is absolute last. I hate coming up with titles.

Tell us about what you've had published.

I started with contemporary romance short stories with The Wild Rose Press. Then I wanted to write a mystery, but it turned into a romantic suspense, Finding Sarah. Since then, I've had seven books published, although one of them, Starting Over, was first published by Cerridwen Press, then re-released with a new title and re-editing, as Nowhere to Hide, which is now available from The Wild Rose Press in print and digital formats.

Any works in progress?

Yes, I'm working on a 3rd Pine Hills Police romantic suspense.

What drives you as a writer?

Otherwise I'd be expected to do things like clean toilets. Writing is much more fun.

How long have you been writing?

About 8 years. In that short time, I've seen amazing changes in the publishing industry. Authors are now free to pursue their own paths, bypassing agents and publishers if they want. I'm kind of in both camps. My Blackthorne, Inc. series fits both categories. I wrote When Danger Calls, and it was published in hard cover by Five Star Expressions. About 18 months after it came out, the publisher decided to "remainder" it, which meant it was effectively out of print.

However, I bought all the remaining copies, so if anyone wants one, I've got them. But, what I decided to do was test the indie-publishing market. Since I owned the rights to the book, I published it myself as an e-book, and it's in virtually all the e-book stores. In the meanwhile, Five Star bought the second book in the series, Where Danger Hides. However, even though they don't retain the e-rights, their contract prohibits and author from publishing the digital version for a year. So, Where Danger Hides is hard cover only.

Then (and because the traditional publishing industry moves so slowly, I'd already signed the contract for the third book in the series, Rooted in Danger, which again will be hard cover only for a year after it's released in April of 2012. Since I'm a writer, I was already working on another book, Danger in Deer Ridge.

However, given the slow turnaround, and the fact that Five Star had discontinued Expression, its romantic line, choosing to focus on mystery, I wasn't sure that book would work for them, so I opted to bypass the publisher entirely and go straight to digital myself. And then I added a print version through Amazon's Create Space for those who prefer print over digital. Complicated? You bet. But I wrote all the books as stand alones. They feature returning characters, but a reader doesn't have to read them in order.

I've also recently regained the rights to my two Pine Hills Police novels, Finding Sarah and Hidden Fire, and have re-published them myself, as well as another stand alone romantic suspense, What's in a Name?

Finding Sarah

Being robbed at gunpoint wasn’t part of Sarah Tucker’s business plan. Neither was falling in love with the detective who arrived to solve the case.

For police detective Randy Detweiler, a routine robbery investigation turns into the biggest challenge of his career when he falls in love with the victim and ends up having to save more than her business.

Hidden Fire

Returning from a stint as part of a task force on violent crime, Randy Detweiler is eager to reunite with Sarah Tucker in Pine Hills, but she’s having second thoughts about their relationship. Can she deal with a cop who gets called away at a moment’s notice, especially one who won’t talk about his job?

Their reunion is cut short when a body is discovered and rumors fly that it’s the work of a serial killer. To make matters worse, the Town Council might disband their police department, and Randy's under added pressure to solve the murder before they take action. Forced to work under the radar, Randy struggles to balance work with a shaky relationship.

Sarah can’t cope with apparently meaning less to Randy than his job. Should she force him to choose between his job and the us she envisions for the two of them? All bets are off when Sarah herself becomes a suspect in Randy’s case. Before long, it’s more than their relationship that’s in danger.

Finding Fire

A Winter's Day: What happened before Sarah met Randy? For Sarah Tucker, life was perfect. She had David, their gift shop, and despite minor spats, a happy marriage--until the day everything turned around. A prologue not included in the novel, A Winter's Day introduces heroine Sarah Tucker, and lays the foundation for what unfolds in Finding Sarah.

Coping Mechanisms: Randy may have his cop partner, but Sarah is his new life partner, and she's aware that any new relationship has its little hiccups. But what works with a fellow cop isn't going to cut it with Sarah. Determined to dismantle his fortress, brick by brick if she has to, she confronts him after a difficult case has him retreating. Follow these newlyweds as their relationship moves onto the next level.

A Summer's Eve: Randy and Sarah are back in an epilogue to Hidden Fire. Cutbacks in the Pine Hills Police force have increased Randy’s workload, and he’s looking forward to getting some time off to spend with his wife. However, despite all of Randy’s detective skills, Sarah still manages to surprise him, sending their lives down a new path.

The Other Side of the Page: Who says characters aren't real? Of course they are. And how do authors find their characters? I can't speak for others, but I advertise. Here's a look at how I found Randy and Sarah, the hero and heroine of Finding Sarah and Hidden Fire. And, as a bonus, there's also a look at what happened when I left them unattended for a while. A tongue-in-cheek look at the other side of writing.

Thanks so much for allowing us to know more about you as a person. The floor is yours. Terry, please tell us where to find your work, your website, your blog, book trailer, and anything else you care to share.

My website

My blog, Terry's Place

I'm also on Twitter as @authorterryo

And you can find me on Facebook, Google+ and probably places I don't even know about! Best way to find me is to go to my website, click the "Links" icon under my picture, and get all the URLs to my pages.

Welcome Sommer and her Zombies

2011-09-26T03:11:00.000-07:00

Please help me welcome the lovely, the awesommer -- SOMMER MARSDEN. She's going to share with us her thoughts on running and writing, then some great books with hot covers and ZOMBIES.

Run for your life!...or your butt…

It drives my kids (and my man) insane that I run without headphones and music. I run in silence. The three of them can’t fathom it, and I can’t fathom any other way.

Running gives my brain a chance to run with the ball, so to speak. No TV, computer or people talking to me to interrupt the flow of my thoughts. Which, yes, can be a bad thing. But it can also be a super thing. It was chance run-in with a very strange passerby one morning that gave me the idea for LUNATIC FRINGE and the snippet below. If I’d been singing along to The Counting Crows or screeching Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of my lungs, I’d have never made the mental connection to my zombies and my exterminators. Ever.

Granted, a lot of what goes on in my head when I’m running is: Oh dear baby Christmas I’m still running is it over yet? Can I sit down now, please?

But during those golden moments where I drift and my mind wanders, I get some good ideas. For current books or future books or blogs. Or just scenes. Titles. Lots of stuff.

But yeah, mostly its internal weeping and begging. Occasionally, I pretend a zombie hoard is chasing me and I say to myself, Run for your life! I usually keep my same old speed, though.

Much to my dismay, I’m running more because I’m about to be forty. And I would like to be a tiny bit lighter. Not much, just enough to wear my favorite jeans to my party and…ya know…breathe.

I did consider on my morning run today, listening to books on tap. They have them now that are as small as an MP3 player and you just insert your own battery and headphones. But then I realized that I’d be piping someone else’s words into my head instead of letting my own unfold. And then I might have missed the fact that it was really misty and foggy and Jack the Ripperish. I might not have realized that it was unusually deserted for my neck of the woods. I live spitting distance from the city proper but for most of my run I felt like I was on some country road. I might have missed the webs that seem to have inundated our neighborhoods and are strewn all over the bushes and trees and even too-tall grass…

See? My brain just took off in six different directions ;)

Leave me a comment for a chance to win the zombie exterminator pdf of your choice. Tell me how you get your ideas (if you happen to a writer), how you exercise, if you love to work out to music or…your favorite zombie book/movie/series. Pretty much dealer’s choice 

XOXO

Sommer

LUNATIC FRINGE by Sommer Marsden.

Buy link: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/497.html

Blurb:

Poppy's birthday should be a big, fun, sexy deal. And it is, until the zombie exterminators find out that the creepers in their neck of the woods happen to be switching the game up a bit. They have a new nifty trick that keeps them from being readily recognizable. Something poor Poppy is unlucky enough to find out on her morning run. She goes from fantasizing about her birthday foursome with the boys, to running home to spread the bad news of mutation.

Her big day is suddenly full of machetes, a lady from the CDC and news of a new vaccine that might—or might not—work. Lucky for Poppy the boys won't let the new turn of events ruin her birthday, they still take her where she needs to go. Because all four of them know, every day could be your last. Sadly, Garrity, Cahill and Noah can't control what happens next. Things change, possibly forever, for their little group of exterminators. And over the next few days Poppy realizes a few things with perfect clarity: she loves Garrity, the thought of losing one of the boys terrifies her, and she's completely at a loss when it comes to one of her own being threatened. It seems to be the one area in which she can't pull off the bad ass persona.

What will she do, she wonders, if their perfect group of four suddenly becomes a group of three? How will she survive?

Excerpt:

“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you…Happy birthday, dear Poppy Cooper you stunning badass…happy birthday to you!” I wheezed to myself as I ran our back road that was nothing but dirt and gravel.

I was twenty-five today. I was running not so much from my birthday, but toward a new year. Or so I told myself. I had finally found a peaceful place in my life, so who was I to bitch about a change in the final digit of my age?

The Mizpah that Garrity had given me for Christmas banged against my chest under my baggy, stained tee. The tee was unattractive to say the least, but the very-vintage, white Old Navy shirt always made me feel peppy enough to run even when that pep was a big fat lie.

I reached up to stroke the sterling silver half- heart through the cotton. Then my hands, ever vigilant, reached around to check the machete that was hanging in a nifty little back sling. I blew out a big breath and concentrated on running at a good clip without falling down.

I was back to humming Happy Birthday, but more quietly. Feeling the Mizpah on my skin, I realized the jewelry was just a placeholder in Garrity’s mind. One day he’d present me with an engagement ring and expect to make an honest woman out of me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

My foot slipped a little on gravel, and I turned my ankle just enough to sting but not enough to do any real damage. Still, I slowed my gait a bit.

“I’m more of the girl you have the wild fling with before you get married,” I confessed to myself because it was how I really felt, and there was no one here to judge me. “I’m the girl you bang senseless for a year or three before you go out and find the mother of your children.”

My throat closed up a little at my declaration.

“No maudlin birthdays, Cooper,” I reprimanded myself.

I started to run again, mostly to distract myself. Tonight there would be presents and cake and—I shivered here—possibly the four of us would do the nasty. Now that I had gotten past the guilt I’d felt at pulling Cahill into my long-anticipated three-way back in December, now…oh now, I wanted it to be all of us. I wanted Noah in my bed with the other boys even though he’d made it clear that he would be there for his man, Cahill. That was fine. I could do rules.

I saw the woman coming, and my heart stammered in my chest, doing that floppy fish tango that always makes me think I’m having a heart attack. Running through my mental quick checklist, I realized she seemed okay: pink flesh, eyes alert, pretty normal gait—normal for these uneven, uncertain gravel and dirt roads.

I raised a hand in acknowledgement.

She ignored me.

“Hunh. Maybe she’s shy,” I muttered under my breath, and I kept running. As long as she wasn’t a creeper, I could run past her without fear.

She was human—just rude.

I studied her some more under my slightly lowered lids as I ran. I was running faster than I’d realized because I was coming up on her faster than intended. Her skin was normal, her eyes were normal, her face seemed blank, but I’d met a few of those in my time. People who just mentally checked out and appeared vacant until you talked to them. So I talked to her.

I was about two feet from her when I said, “Hi, how ya doing?”

She sort of twitched, her eyes finding me, and when I was within touching distance, she grabbed my arm. Her skin was cold and kind of soft, and I felt it give as she pressed her fingers to my arm. Then I smelled her.

“Jesus pleesus, holy mother fuck,” I growled and grabbed her upper arm both to gain control and keep her from tugging me in.

Her arm came off in my hand, as easy as a chicken leg pulling free of a roasted bird at Sunday dinner.

I felt my stomach roll over and realized I was no longer running. I was standing stock still, clutching this woman’s arm. This perfectly normal-looking woman until…now.

She turned to me then, and I blinked, seeing the mottled flesh, the white-rimmed eyes, the gaping mouth, the hunger. I saw it all, and when she moved her face in toward me with that now-mechanically snapping jaw, I hit her with her arm. I clobbered her upside the head, and her dirty brown hair swayed. She made a moan-grunt-sigh sound, and I hit her again—hard.

Her arm fell apart in my hand, and I gagged. Sure, I’m an exterminator, but I’m still human. An arm coming apart in your hand is gross. I don’t care who you are.

“Bitch,” I grunted, trying to keep myself fired up. Angry keeps you alert. Scared gets you dead.

I stepped back from her—three giant mother-may-I sort of steps and yanked my machete free.

This time when she stepped toward me, I lopped off her head, stuck the tip of the machete in the front of her skull and split it like a ripe watermelon. Why? It was the kind thing to do. If I hadn’t punctured the brain, she’d just be a body-less head with some sort of murky awareness. To me, that is the very definition of hell.

I stared at her twitching body and her shattered head. The arm lay to the side of the road in some weeds. “Happy fucking birthday,” I said to myself and turned fast to run home.

Excerpt from WE KILL DEAD THINGS (Zombie Exterminators Book #1)
Buy Link: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/m8/315-200-107-489-1--we-kill-dead-things-by-sommer-marsden.html

Also on Kindle, at ARe, Bookstrand etc.

Prologue

Honestly, the whole thing is Noah’s fault. We were all doing our normal closing-time bitchfest in the food square at Parktowne Mall and not really paying attention, when the first creeper showed up. That’s what we call them—the zombies—creepers.

Anyway, the first one showed up, and I assumed it was just another stoner looking for a slushie. Nope. It took all of my college logic skills to finally realize the creeper was up to no good when it lunged over the counter at me.

Garrity—Chris to his enemies—the object of my not-so-secret lust, let out a yell and rushed out with the bat we keep behind the counter at Smash It, the slushy and juice shop we run. He hit the guy on the shoulder—intending to do no real damage—but the bat sort of sank in and then made a squishy noise.

“He reeks,” I’d yelled, or something equally brilliant.

Then Noah was running out of Mamma’s Pies pizza stand with a meat cleaver of all things. Which he promptly buried in the guy’s skull. Thank God he was carving up Italian beef at the time.

The creeper gave me a stunned look that almost made me feel bad for him and Noah gave the cleaver another little shove and something cracked deep in the dead guy’s skull.

The dead guy fell on me.

Gross.

That had been the first creeper, and Noah had taken it out (being the only one smart enough to have the news on in his food court stall so he actually had news about the suddenly mobile undead). Garrity had to take out six more before we got the main doors locked. Nick Cahill—main man at The Beef Barn—found one making the moves on a side of beef in the walk-in. He took it out with an electric knife.

The night was pretty much what bizarre is made of, and when we found ourselves clustered on the merry-go-round drinking a good bottle of wine pilfered from the gourmet place, Noah made a joke.

“We should start a new business,” he laughed. He was a business major, after all. “Our slogan could be We Kill Dead Things.”

Excerpt from NO GUILT (Zombie Exterminators book #2)
Buy Link: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/m8/323-201-107-489-2--no-guilt-zombie-exterminators-series-book-two-by-sommer-marsden.html

Also on Kindle, at ARe, Bookstrand etc.

Chapter One

“Don’t spook her,” Garrity said.

Noah was turning his big white van onto Topaz Lane, and I was trying really, really hard not to stare at Cahill. This was our first big job since moving from Maryland to Connecticut. Our first mission handed down and paid for by the county we lived in. Once we left our hometown after taking care of the Evoluminaries and their rabid leader William Tell (who had wanted to use me as a zombie baby mamma, thank you very much) we’d treated ourselves to a few weeks off.

Now the cupboard was bare, and we were itching to do something that did not involve loud music, alcohol and trading creeper war stories like old men at a veterans’ lunch.

“I won’t spook her. Why the hell would I spook her?” I snapped. Being fixated on Cahill’s offer wasn’t helping my mood. An offer of a threesome with him and Garrity—something that, yes, boys and girls, I have fantasized about more than once. It had come out of the blue after a drunken bucket-list conversation the four of us had had. Bam! In a moment of privacy, the offered was slammed down on the figurative table, and I couldn’t seem to stop poking at it. It was something I wanted, but it scared me.

I caught Cahill looking at me from the front seat where he rode shotgun to his lover Noah. I felt my face flush when I saw his cocky grin. Jeesh.

“Because you seem a bit on edge, Poppy,” Garrity said and leaned in. “Why are you so on edge, babe?”

It had taken forever and ever for me and Garrity to get together despite attraction and all that jazz. But my mother’s death and our last mission had sealed a bond that was a long time coming. So how would he feel about bringing handsome, tall Cahill in on the sex part of stuff? My brain wouldn’t let it go, but I swallowed hard and said “Don’t know. Maybe I’m rusty.”

“Nah. You’re good, girly. There’s nothing rusty about you,” he said and kissed me.

I turned my face fast—before I could analyze it—and kissed him on the lips. Part of me wanted to say those dreaded three words. I love you…part of me wanted to scream at even allowing myself to think it.

The van jumped and jittered on non-existent shocks and ripped me out of my reverie. “We’re here,” Noah said.

“Ready?” Cahill asked.

“No,” I said.

“Good.” Garrity patted my legs. “So let’s do this thing.”

We got out of the van and went to knock on Marylou Peterson’s front door.

I watched that instant—the instant that all couples seem to have—unfold. As Garrity was touching the small of my back, Cahill was touching Noah’s arm. That we-have-a-connection touch. Would Noah hate me forever if I took Cahill up on his offer? Would it ruin our friendship? Would it ruin the four of us and how we worked together? It was something I had to push out of my head as the front door swung inward. I had to focus on the complaints by the neighborhood and the county about a creeper that was loose that no one could seem to pinpoint. The last place it had been seen was Marylou’s house. I needed to focus on her.

“Hi, Marylou Peterson?” I spoke. The boys felt it better that I introduce us since I was relatively calm and a girl and there was a zombie apocalypse under way—or so the general population thought. “My name is Poppy Cooper, and we need to talk to you about a recent cree—” Garrity nudged me. Creeper was our own personal nickname for the undead. “Um…undead sighting on your property.”

“Who are you?”

“We’re county licensed freelance exterminators,” I said. Which was a fancy way of saying we kill dead things. We’re killers for hire.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice.

“May we come inside and speak with you?” Garrity asked, flipping a piece of nearly black hair out of his blue-blue eyes. He smiled. His boy next door shtick. Niiiiice.

“Sure. Come on,” she said and took a step back.

Funny. She seemed more scared of us than the idea of rogue zombies in her neck of the woods.

People were strange.

“It was on my property?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and frightened but off. Something wasn’t right, and I couldn’t figure out what. Maybe we’d interrupted her and her boyfriend or something.

I looked at the county’s paperwork. Connecticut was way more of a stickler for paperwork than Maryland had ever been. Go figure. “Two complaints of a lone male undead subject on your property,” I said. “But when someone is sent out to take care of the call, he’s gone. There is a note that the second complaint called was only partially sure it was a male subject. Have you seen anything?”

She shook her head. Her big brown eyes wide, her fingers twirling a piece of dyed-red hair so tight I feared the whole lock would pop right out of her scalp. “No. It’s just me and my brother here. I haven’t seen anything. My dad’s long gone—has been for years, my mom…” She shook her head and looked away.

Christ, I hated this part. I always felt like a heel. Like I was pouring salt in a wound, because I was. I had lost my mother to a creeper, I knew the pain of it. I also knew I’d been slightly luckier than most simply because my mother had been immune to the virus that was infecting all these undead. She didn’t rise. Most people had to deal with the loss and unwanted resurrection.

“I’m sorry,” I said. A few stupid words that could not possibly stem the flow of pain.

She nodded, cleared her throat. “My mother succumbed to the virus.”

“And your brother? Has he seen anything?”

“I’d have to ask him. Chuck’s not here right now, though,” she said, waving her hand around the kitchen. “But I’ll ask when I see him.”

“Can we look around your property? Maybe there’s something attracting this subject,” I said. When did I start talking like a zombie cop? I didn’t know.

“Sure,” she said and gave me another shrug. “You’re not going to find much. An overgrown yard, a shed, honeysuckle bushes and an old dog house. But go for it.”

“Thanks.” I nodded to her back kitchen door. “May we?”

Marylou stood and unlocked a series of locks on the door. Finally, she was able to pull it open. “I’ll be here when you’re done,” she said.

I eyed Garrity and his gaze flicked to the locks. Five of them by count and an old fashioned cheap battery operated alarm. It simply hung on the door knob, and if jostled it would sound an ear piercing alarm to let the occupants know someone had opened the door.

When we hit the wide planted, screened-in back porch, I whispered to him “Safety first.”

“Jesus, I’ll say.”

Cahill and Noah had already hit the property, walking the perimeter like two jungle hunters. I turned to face the house once I hit mid-yard. I stared up at the farmhouse windows that reminded me creepily of the eyes of the undead. They were there, they were open, but no one was home. The windows were uncovered, the sun bouncing off the upper panes of glass. I thought I saw something in the upper right, but then a crow flew overhead and it was gone. Probably a reflection.

The house to the right was for sale. The house to the left was buttoned up like a storm was coming. “We need to check next door,” I said to Garrity.

He grunted and checked out the shed. “Nothing but lawn stuff. Mower, hoes,” he laughed.

“Are you five?”

“Hoes,” he laughed again.

“Dipshit.”

“Snippy.”

“Childish.”

“Bitchy.”

“Hey, flirt later!” Cahill called, and when I looked up, surprised, he winked at me.

It went right to my pussy, that wink. I shook my head, ashamed of myself. We were on a job. I could worry about my sex life later.

“Anyway, just some gas and lawn care stuff. Normal shed crap,” Garrity said and put an arm around me as he passed to show we’d just been teasing.

I kissed him on the cheek, and he looked surprised. It was my penance for dirty thoughts about Cahill. Now how did I make amends with Noah? I had no idea.

Not that Noah was even paying attention. Or seemed to care. Maybe he didn’t know about…

“Hello?” Garrity rapped softly on my forehead with his knuckles.

“Sorry. Spacey. What did you say?”

“I said we need to talk to that brother. But first we’ll go next door.” He cocked his thumb at the battened-down house. “My guess is at least one of the complaint calls came from there.”

“I agree.”

“Well, someone call fucking Guinness. Or the church. Because that’s a miracle.” Noah brushed his surfer boy hair out of the way and holstered his gun. We were all armed to the teeth but trying to appear like we were just checking to see what was what.

It was nice to keep everything tucked away and hidden until we had an actual creeper spotting. On the other hand, we had to have it all so we weren’t caught off guard and didn’t become lunch for some dead things.

“Seriously,” Cahill said and put a possessive hand on Noah.

It made me hot all over to see those two touch, and it instantly brought to mind the times I’d accidentally seen them together. It was easy to imagine Noah sucking off Cahill. And it was never hard for me to call up the image of Cahill plunging into pretty Noah. Holding his slim hips and pushing his cock deep inside. But it had totally been accidental, me seeing them. Okay, the first time had been an accident. The other times had been luck.

“We’ll cut through the bushes to speak to the neighbor. When we come back here we can use the back door and talk to Marylou.”

“She’s edgy with a capital fidgety,” Noah said.

“I know. But imagine that you’re a young woman living with just your brother, and he’s not here. Maybe she’s alone a lot. Her mom died.” I felt a twinge in my gut when they all looked sad for me, and I shook my head. “Don’t do that. Don’t pity me,” I snapped, and they all fixed their faces into masks of indifference.

I cleared my throat, coughing away the ball of emotion that had lodged there. “And she doesn’t have dad to speak of. That’s gotta be hard. And then we show up—our ragtag team of killers…I gotta say, boys, I’d be a little edgy too, I think.”

Garrity sighed. “You have a point. Lucky you, you have us.” He smacked my ass hard, and I gaped at him.

“Come on,” Noah said to Cahill, and led the way. “Let’s go talk to the neighbor before they do something like fuck in the bushes.”

It was Cahill who turned and waggled his eyebrows at me. Jesus. This was getting sticky fast.

Opal's Disappearance available soon at Wild Child Publishing

2011-09-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

larger image

Sheryl Locke Holmes Mysteries: Book 3: Opal's Disappearance

$2.99

Available October 11, 2011

Buy Link

by C.L. Exline

An old college friend begs Sheryl to help find her missing cousin, Opal, who may have been kidnapped by a mysterious mountain man. When all leads are exhausted, Sheryl concocts a dangerous plan—she becomes bait for the kidnapper and alleged murderer.

But will she survive her plan? Or is this Sheryl's last mystery?

Genre: Mystery/Humor
Book Length: Short Story
Word Count: 31,465
Pages: 120
Price: $2.99
Formats: PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit, PRC

Buy link

Last day of Back to Back with Kathryn Meyer Griffith

2011-09-10T05:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to the last installment of Back to Back with multi-published author Kathryn Meyer Griffith. She's been gracious enough to share with us the backstories with three of her books. The Heart of the Rose, Vampire Blood and today we finish with Witches.

The Story of Witches

(Originally a 1993 Zebra paperback and

now a 2011 Revised Author’s Edition from Damnation Books)

By Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Buy Link: http://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615723553

In 1991 I’d already been writing for about twenty years, on and off (though there was a long gap where I didn’t write because of a divorce, the finding of a full time job to support myself and my son, and a remarriage…life) when I contracted my fourth novel, my first of four to Zebra paperbacks, a romantic horror called Vampire Blood, about a family of vampires who ran a movie theater in a small town. I’d already had a fifth novel, The Last Vampire, completed and in with them when they asked me for another novel.

Got anything about witches, they asked. Witches are hot right now. Hmmm.

For many years I’d played around with an idea about a present day white witch who finds a diary of a long dead witch – either good or bad, I hadn’t decided – in her old house’s attic, or basement, or under a floorboard. The story would have been about the good witch reliving the other dead witch’s life through the diary. I’d always called that possible book Rachel’s Diary in my head.

So in 1991 or 1992 I began the witch book and it quickly metamorphosed into a story of a present day good witch, Amanda Givens, who’s yanked into a perilous seventeenth century past by an evil witch, Rachel Coxe, to take her place…and die a horrible death as an accused witch. I had the idea then to actually send Amanda into the past to live (for a while) the other witch’s life. Of course, being a good witch, Amanda, changes the other witch’s unsavory reputation but still ends up in a prison waiting to die for Rachel’s earlier crimes. The story, simply put, would be how Amanda overcomes her trials and tribulations, finds her lost eternal love again in the past, and finds a way to return to the present alive. In the process, learning some important life lessons about accepting what life has dealt her and the value of sisters, friendships and the love of those around her. Or good versus evil and, in the end, good wins and is rewarded. I also threw in a few touches of humor in the form of three precocious witches’ familiars…a mind-reading and speaking cat called Amadeus, a mouse, Tituba, and a tiny bat, Gibbiewackett …all with feisty personalities and quirks of their own.

I was excited about the book as I was writing it and when it was done, pleased with it, but had no idea that over the years it’d become the jewel of my writing career and the book that my fans would love the best of all my books. I loved the cat face cover Zebra did for it (a rare occurrence as I’d learned the hard way that covers weren’t always what I’d envisioned and in the early days I had no choice but to accept whatever the publisher’s gave me…and some weren’t so hot, let me tell you!).

Witches came out in 1993 and did well. I noticed soon after as I went on to publish other books that I got the most response and admiration for it. Readers loved the three sisters, Amadeus and Amanda, Gibbiewackett and Tituba. In those days I was too busy working full time as a graphic artist, living my life and writing new books to notice. It went into a second printing in 2000 and after that, sadly, went out of print. But my fans never forgot it. I’d find comments on it and discussions on the Internet…even customer reviews raving about it years and years later. I tried talking Zebra into reissuing it but after Zebra and I parted ways there was no talking them into it.

Then in 2010 when Damnation Books contracted my 13^th and 14^th novels, the publisher, Kim Richards, asked about all (there was 7 at the time) my out-of-print Zebra and Leisure backlist novels and if I’d like to have them reissued as new paperbacks and, for the first time ever, in e-books. Sure, that’d be great! I told her. And, as they say, the rest is history. Between June 2010 and July 2012 all 7 of them (and now another 3 of my Wild Rose Press novels and two short stories from 2007) updated, rewritten and with stunning new covers will be out again. All in e-books for the first time.

Of course, that’s meant a heck of a lot of rewriting. A lot of work. Those early novels go back twenty-seven years and were first written in the days of snail mail and on an electric typewriter before the Internet, e-mails and Windows Track Changes (for editing). Oh, boy, did they need revising. As of today I can happily say they’re all rewritten now except the very first one, Evil Stalks the Night, 1984; yet even that one will be completed soon.

I’ve often been asked what I think of e-books and I have to say it feels strange, all these years later, to be so into them. I think it’s fantastic to be able to put thousands of books on one little lightweight hand-held contraption and sell them as inexpensively as we do. I started publishing e-books four years ago and have seen such great changes in even that short a time. I love the editing process now. With Track Changes it’s truly a collaborative effort between the editor and the writer and it’s taught me far more about the craft of writing than the old way of just sending off the manuscript, being asked to change certain things, but then never seeing any of those changes or the basic edits until the book was printed and in my hand. Now, no more pages added by an editor (That actually happened in Evil Stalks the Night. The editor, who I never met, added three pages of his own and I didn’t even know about it until I held the book in my hand. And the three pages didn’t make sense…ech!) that I never know about or see until the book comes out. Yeah.

With a chuckle I recall a writer’s convention I attended in 1990 – yes, that far back – and the main topic back then was…OMG the electronic books are coming! They’re going to make us authors obsolete! Print books are going to die a terrible lonely death…etc., etc. Lack and alas, what are we going to do? Ha, ha. It’s ironic that 21 years later I’m in love with e-books. They’re the future. And I think there’ll always be room for print books as well as electronic ones.

So Witches…Damnation Books is rereleasing it April 1, 2011. I’m thrilled. The cover is still of Amadeus, the cat, and Dawne Dominique did an amazing job on it. My editor, Alison O'Byrne, helped me make it a better book than eighteen years ago. Of all my novels, I’m most proud of it. It’s held up pretty well. I hope it finds many more readers and fans.

So that’s the story of Witches…the little book that wouldn’t die.

Thank you! E-mail me at rdgriff@htc.net

***

Kathryn Meyer Griffith has been writing for nearly forty years and has published 14 novels and 7 short stories since 1984 with Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press in the horror, romantic paranormal, suspense and murder mystery genres… and all 12 of her old books above (and two new ones) are being brought out again between June 2010 and July 2012 from DAMNATION BOOKS www.damnationbooks.com and ETERNAL PRESS www.eternalpress.biz again in print – and all in e-books for the first time ever! Learn more about her at www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyergriffith and http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486 .

Second Day of Back to Back with Kathryn Meyer Griffith

2011-09-09T06:23:00.000-07:00

Day two of Back to Back with Kathryn Meyer Griffith. Let's welcome, Kathryn. We've started a three post investigation as to the backstory to three of Kathryn's books. First post we read why she wrote The Heart of The Rose. And I've received emails that stated how much they loved this idea. Me too! Don't be shy commenting, dear readers.

This post features the story of Vampire Blood.

The Story of Vampire Blood

Author’s Revised Edition by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

A rerelease of my 1991 Zebra paperback romantic vampire novel

Damnation Books Buy Link: http://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615724253

In 1990 or so I’d just got done releasing my first three paperback novels with Leisure Books, a romantic historical (The Heart of the Rose 1985) and two romantic horror books (Evil Stalks the Night, 1984 and Blood Forge, 1989), and because I wasn’t making much money on them, was looking, as most so-called restless young authors were doing, to move up in the publishing industry.

So I wrote snail mail letters to three established authors of the day – Dean Koontz, Stephen King and Peter Straub – asking for a little advice and a little help. What do I do next? I want to be one of the big dogs running in the big races. I want to make the big bucks. Be famous like you. (Ha, ha. I was so naïve in those days!)

Well, Stephen King and Peter Straub never answered my letters but one rainy fall night I got a phone call from Gerda Koontz (Dean Koontz’s wife) and she said Dean had gotten my letter and wanted me to have a name of a brand new agent who I should call or write to and say I was recommended by him. If I thought it strange that Dean Koontz himself wasn’t actually talking to me I was told by Gerda that he was a shy man and had had a particularly hard couple of months because of family problems (I think it had something to do with his father in a nursing home or something, but can’t exactly recall now) and he’d asked her to call me. She often did that for him, as well as helping him with the business side of his writing career. He (through her…and I got the impression that he was actually nearby telling her what to say the whole time) said I had to have an agent (I didn’t have one) and then he gave me the name of an ambitious one, Lori Perkins, just starting out and his advice on what I should do to advance as a writer.

I do remember being incredibly touched that he, a famous busy novelist that I admired – I loved his Twilight Eyes – would take the time to talk to me, even through his wife. They were both so sweet and we talked for nearly an hour all about writing, books and everything.

I took their advice and contacted that agent and she agreed immediately to represent me on my fourth book, Vampire Blood, no doubt, because I said Dean Koontz had recommended her to me. Name dropper! But Vampire Blood was the reason I’d contacted those famous authors in the first place. I thought it was the best book I’d done so far and wanted it to go to (what I thought at the time) would be a better publisher than Leisure Books, which contracted and hog-tied their writers with a horrible ‘potboiler’ one-size-fits-all ten year contract with low advances and 4% royalties. Yes, I got a whole whopping 14 cents a book in those days, but, I must confess, they did print thousands of paperbacks each run and had a huge distribution area. I thought I could do a lot better. Anyway, Lori Perkins wanted me to send her the book and she did like it and eventually sold it, and then three others zip-zip-zip right after, to Zebra Books (now known more as Kensington Publishing) at 6% royalties and double the advances I was used to getting. They slapped a sexy blond vampire with a low dress on the cover and a hazy theater behind her. Lovely colors. I thought it was an eye-catching cover. I was so happy. I thought I’d made it! Again, so naïve.

Vampire Blood. A little story about a family of vicious killing vampires who settle in a small Florida town called Summer Haven and end up buying and fixing up an old theater palace to run, and pluck their victims from, and a divorced, down-on-her-luck ex-novelist and her worn-out father, who along with friends, help thwart them.

Now to how and why I wrote it.

My husband and I lived in this small Illinois town, Cahokia, at the time and there was the neatest little hole-in-the-wall theater in a nearby shopping center we used to go to all the time…run by a family of a sweet man, Terry, and his wife, Ann, and sometimes their three children, two teenage boys and a girl named Irene. Such a friendly, but odd couple. The run-down theater was their whole world it seemed. The kids helped take in the tickets, pop the popcorn and sell the candy snacks.

Now the minute Terry and Ann found out, in one of our earliest conversations, that I was a published novelist they were my greatest fans. Terry went right out and bought all three of my books and they all read them. Terry always thought they’d make great movies. Next time my husband and I went to the little theater Terry and Ann greeted us like old friends, so delighted to see us, and refused to take a dime from us for anything. We got in free whenever we went from then on. Now in those days my husband, my son, James, and I were pretty broke. I worked as a graphic designer at a big brokerage firm in downtown St. Louis (across the Poplar Bridge from our Illinois town) but my husband was in between jobs. We lived on a shoestring. Hard times. So I always was so tickled that we could get into the local movies for free. We went a lot, too, as we loved movies, especially science fiction and horror films.

One night I was watching Terry and Ann and their joy in running that little theater, with the kids bustling around doing their jobs, and I got the idea for Vampire Blood. Just like that! Use them and the theater as a backdrop for a vampire novel. Hey, wouldn’t it be neat, I off-handedly mentioned to Terry one night, if I wrote a book about a family of vampires that was trying to pass as a real human family, the man and woman wanting so badly to fit in and lead a normal life for a while, renovating and then running a theater together…but the kids are wild and, as kids always do, make trouble for them in the town…killing people? Terry loved the idea and I asked him if it’d be all right to use him and his family as a template for the vampires. He was thrilled to be part of anything to do with my books and said yes. So…I wrote this book about them (sort of), the theater (making it much grander than it was, of course), a small town terrorized by cruel, powerful vampires who can change into wolves at will….and a saddened lonely woman, her brother, and her ex-husband (who she still loves and ultimately ends up with again after he saves her life) who finds herself again, but loses a lot, as well, fighting these vampires. Vampires she doesn’t believe in at first.

I was very happy with the book when it was done and dedicated it to Terry and Ann when it came out in 1991. Terry and Ann were thrilled, too.

So Vampire Blood came out and did very well for me, second only to my Zebra 1993 Witches. As the years went by it went out of print and when, twenty years later, Kim Richards at Damnation Books contracted my 13^th and 14^th novels, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson, she asked if I’d like to rerelease (with new covers and rewritten, of course) my 7 out-of-print Leisure and Zebra paperbacks – and I said a resounding yes!

So…here it is…Vampire Blood…twenty years later, alive again and better, I believe, than the original because my writing then was done on an electric typewriter, with gobs of White-Out and carbon paper (I couldn’t afford copies), using snail mail; all of which didn’t lend itself to much rewriting. And in those days, editors told an author what to change and then the writer only saw the manuscript once to final proof it. Who knew what those sneaky editors were slipping in inbetween and before the final book was in an author’s greedy little hands. Hey, and I was working full time, raising a son, living a life and caring for my big extended family in one way or another, too. Busy, exciting, loving, happy and sad times.

For this new version, Damnation Book’s cover artist Dawné Dominique made me an astonishingly intriguing cover of a lovely vampire (Irene the youngest vampire who turns out to be the most brutal and ancient in the end)…but, thank goodness, without the low sexy top. And my DB editor, April Duncan, helped me make it a better novel.

A lot has happened to me and my family in these twenty years, as well. Both my parents, and my beloved maternal grandmother, the storyteller of her generation, have since passed away. Many people we used to know have. Old boyfriends, old friends and relatives. I miss them all! I no longer have that agent; she went on to bigger advances and bigger writers. I lost my good job at the brokerage firm, bumped around in lesser jobs for years, always writing in my spare time, and now, at long last, write full time while my husband works way too hard in a machine shop to support us.

Rewriting the book brought back so many good memories…and tears over those no longer here. The theater closed sixteen years ago, the owner believing it’d served its purpose and used up its time. Terry and Ann, heartbroken, were never the same. They had other jobs, none they truly cared about. Ann is still with us, but Terry died a few years ago, I heard from someone. We lost contact once they stopped running the theater and we moved from Cahokia to a nicer town miles away.

But I’ll never forget those early days and the stories that came with them. Days of high hopes and far distance future dreams…some of which have come true and some which haven’t. I’ve never made the big bucks, never gotten truly famous, but now, at long last and to my great delight, all twelve of my older books, from Leisure, Zebra, and The Wild Rose Press are being rewritten and reissued from Damnation Books and Eternal Press between June 2010 and July 2012. Better than ever after I’d rewritten them. I have plans to write more books and short stories, too, when they’re done. Most importantly, I’m living a good life with a husband I adore and brothers and sisters I love. Writing the stories I was born to write and happy I am. I have my memories. All in all, I’m a lucky, lucky woman.

So, all you writers out there…never give up and never stop writing!

Thank you!

***

Kathryn Meyer Griffith has been writing for nearly forty years and has published 14 novels and 7 short stories since 1984 with Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press in the horror, romantic paranormal, suspense and murder mystery genres… and all 12 of her old books, see below, (and two new ones) are being brought out again between June 2010 and July 2012 from DAMNATION BOOKS www.damnationbooks.com and ETERNAL PRESS www.eternalpress.biz again in print – and all in e-books for the first time ever! Learn more about her at www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith or www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyergriffith and http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486 .

***

Back to Back with Kathryn Meyer Griffith

2011-09-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

Welcome back the awesome author, Kathryn Meyer Griffith. She's back to share a backstory to The Heart of the Rose, Vampire Blood, and Witches.

Now I know I'm not the only reader who wants to know where the idea for a book came from and the journey of its creation. We're lucky that she has agreed to share those three backstories over three different posts, so keep checking for more information.

Today, she'll tell us why she wrote The Heart of the Rose. (Great title huh? The cover is great too -- never mind, I'll post it too.)

Why I Wrote The Heart of the Rose

I started writing The Heart of the Rose after my only child, James, was born in late 1971. I was staying at home with him, not working, and was bored out of my skin. I read a horrible historical romance one day and thought I can do better than that!

So I got out my old typewriter with the keys that stuck, my bottles of White-Out, carbon paper for copies, and started clicking away. I tentatively called the book King’s Witch because it was about a 15^th century healer loved by Edward the Fourth who was falsely believed to be a witch. At the library (no computers or Internet back then) I did tedious research into that time in English history: the War of the Roses, the poverty and civil strife between the Red (Lancasters) and White Rose (Yorks); the Earl of Warwick and Edward the King. His brother Richard the Third. A real saga. Well, all that was big back then. I was way out of my league. Didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I just wrote. Reading it now I have to laugh. It was pretty bad. But people, mainly women, loved it.

And so my writing career began. That was 40 years ago. It took me 12 years to get that first book published as I got sidetracked with a divorce, raising a son, and having to get a real job. Life, as it always seems to do, got in the way.

Then one day years later I found the manuscript in my bottom drawer and decided to rewrite it; try to sell it. I bundled up the revised pile of printed copy pages, tucked it into an empty copy paper box and took it to the Post Office. Plastered it with stamps. I sent it everywhere The Writer’s Market of that year said I could. And waited. Months and months and months. In those days it could take up to a year or more to sell a novel, in between revising and rewriting to please any editor that would make a suggestion or comment. Snail mail took forever, too, and was expensive.

In the meantime, I wrote another book. Kind of a fictionalized look back at my childhood in a large (6 brothers and sisters) poor but loving family in the 1950’s and 60’s. I started sending that one out, as well. Then one day an editor suggested that since my writing had such a spooky feel to it anyway, why didn’t I just turn the book into a horror novel. Like Steven King was doing. Ordinary people under supernatural circumstances. A book like that would really sell, she said. Hmmm. Well, it was worth a try, so I added something scary in the woods in the main character’s childhood past that she had to return to and face in her adult life, using some of my childhood as hers. I retitled it Evil Stalks the Night and started sending it out. That editor was right, it sold quickly.

But right before it was to go to editing, the publisher, Towers Publishing…went bankrupt and was bought out by another publisher! The book was lost somewhere in the stacks of unedited slush in a company undergoing massive changes as the new publisher took over. I had a contract and didn’t know how to break it. Heaven knows, I couldn’t afford a lawyer. My life with a husband and son was one step above poverty at times. Back then I was so naïve. That was 1983 and that take-over publisher was Leisure Books.

As often as has happened to me over my writing career, though, fate seemed to step in and the Tower’s editor that had bought my book, before she left, told one of Leisure’s editors about it and asked her to try to save it. She believed in it that much.

Out of the blue, in 1984, when I had completely given up on the book, Leisure Books sent me a letter offering to buy Evil Stalks the Night! Then, miracle of miracles, my new editor asked if I had any other ideas or books she could look at. I sent her The Heart of the Rose and Leisure Books promptly bought that one in 1985, as well; labeling it, and asking me to sex it up some, as an historical bodice-ripper (remember those…the sexy knockoffs of Rosemary Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwiss’s provocative novels?)! It wasn’t a lot of money for either. A thousand dollar advance and only 4% royalties on the paperbacks. But back in those days the publishers had a bigger distribution and thousands and thousands of the paperbacks were printed, warehoused and sent to bookstores. So 4% of all those books did add up.

So my career began. I sold ten more novels and various short stories over the next 25 years –as I was working full time and living my life. Some did well (my Zebra and leisure paperbacks) and some didn’t. Most of them, over the years, eventually went out of print.

And twenty-seven years later, when Kim Richards at Damnation Books contracted my 13^th and 14^th novels, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson, she asked if I’d like to rerelease (with new covers and rewritten, of course) my 7 out-of-print Leisure and Zebra paperbacks, including The Heart of the Rose – and I said a resounding yes!

Of course, I had to totally rewrite The Heart of the Rose for the resurrected edition because my writing when I was twenty-one was immature, unpolished and had been done on an electric typewriter, with lots of White-Out and carbon paper (I couldn’t afford copies), using snail mail; all of which didn’t lend itself to much rewriting. Then also in those days, editors told an author what to change and the writer only saw the manuscript once to final proof it. I also totally rewrote the book because, as was the style in the 1980’s, the prose was written in that old-fashioned prose using thees and ayes. The dialect of 15^th century

England

. There were sex scenes I had to tone down. It was awful. So I modernized the language, cut all the redundant adjectives and adverbs and helped the characters to grow up a little (they were so dramatic). The Heart of the Rose-Revised Author’s Edition published by Eternal Press in November 2010 (http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615722327 ), hopefully, then is a lot better book than it ever was in 1985. It should be…I have had thirty-nine more years of life and experiences to help make it a better book. Author Kathryn Meyer Griffith

***

You can keep up with Kathryn on her Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1019954486, or her My Space www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

Coming next is: The Story of Vampire Blood. Now you know you don't want to miss that backstory.

Welcome Janice Seagraves

2011-08-21T04:06:00.000-07:00

It's my pleasure to have as a guest, dear friend, Janice Seagraves. Besides being an author, she also has a very informative Yahoo loop group called Writers Sea Grotto.

Writers Sea Grotto is for new and seasoned writers to learn and share their unique writing experiences. It's a great place to hang out, to meet other authors. You can chat or ask questions if you've hit a rough spot in your MS.

Janice also posts mini lessons that give us tips and suggestions on how to improve our craft. Besides the usual promo day, we have Work In Progress Day, Brainstorming Sessions, etc.



  

  Click to join writers_sea_grotto

Windswept Shores has awesome characters who have been shipwrecked and left to their own devices. If you've ever wondered how you'd fare being on a deserted island read how this couple manages. It's not all sunsets and coconuts. Great imagery, dialogue, and exciting events. Certainly kept my attention to the very end.

Janice, the floor is yours.

Mistakes in Conversation

By Janice Seagraves

Hubby and I had this conversation just the other day. You know that one that’s said and the one that’s just under the surface. But the problem is, for the wife I'm kind of thick.

Hubby: "I'm taking a friend from work all the way to Clovis. It's a long drive and I'll be driving back all by myself." (Come with me so I won't be lonely.)

Me: I nod. "Yeah you will be all alone."

Hubby: "I won that gift certificate at Wal-Mart." (There's a bribe in this for you, if you'll go with me.)

Me: "Yeah, you did."

Him: He looks me up and down. I'm dressed in a nice at home outfit. (His look implies that I'm dressed nice enough that I won't embarrass him in public.)

Me: “Hmm?” (Why are you looking at me like that?)

Him: And then my fifty-three year old hubby's bottom lip sticks out in a pout. (You’re not getting what I'm trying to tell you.)

Me: "Oh!" I look at him again. "You want me to go with you?" (God, I'm dense.)

Him: He grins and bats his big brown eyes at me. (That's what I've been trying to tell you.)

Me: "Okay, let me get my purse." (I’m going with you, but I'll still take that bribe.)

~***~

What’s fun is adding some of that same misunderstanding to your work.

Here’s an excerpt from my book, Windswept Shores:

They waded out and began scraping off the black, shiny mussels that clung to the rock. The surf pulled and dragged at Meagan’s legs, getting both of them thoroughly soaked.

“Isn’t that a beaut?” Seth showed Megan a fine clutch of mussels. “I got ‘em in one go.”

“Oh, that’s great! And they’re nice big ones, too.” She held out the basket, but slipped on a stone, stumbling against his side.

He dropped the shellfish into the basket she held. “Easy there, mate.”

“I mean the mussels,” she snapped.

“I meant the mussels, too.” He scraped at another batch. “Course, a man’s muscle is his most important body part.”

“O-oh, you’re just like every guy I know. Why is it always sex with men?”

“Do you know which muscle I was even talking about?” He smirked. “Most blokes are scum.” He glanced sidelong at her. “Most blokes just want to tell their mates how many birds they've shagged that week.” He dropped more mussels in her basket. “But I could be different, if you ever want to find out.”

“You do realize I’m a married woman?”

Seth yanked his gaze up to hers. “Megz, I realize you’re a spunky widow.”

“I’m not a widow. He’s alive,” she snapped, blinking back tears.

“You have a nightmare every night about his death.”

“I-I don’t know for sure.” Megan scraped vigorously at a new spot. “Jonathan might have made it. The plane could have . . . popped out—” Half the shiny black shells fell into the water, as she snatched at the rest. “From the other side of the wave,” she finished.

“Orright.” He shrugged.

Megan dropped her mussels into the basket. “I think we have enough. Let’s go in.”

“Ready when you are, mate.”

Roaring filled her ears as a large wave hit, for a moment all Megan could see was teal tinged water.

A hand grabbed her arm, keeping her rooted to the spot. “Megz?”

Megan coughed rubbing the saltwater sting from her eyes. “I’m fine,” she gasped.

“Let me have the mussels. The waves are picking up.” He dropped his scraper into her basket, then took it from her.

Another wave hit, but this time it lifted Megan off the rocks. Seth grabbed her around the waist. She clung to him.

“The sea means to take you back.”

“It can’t have me.” She looked around. “I think I lost my scraper.”

“Let it go, mate. You can make another.”

In the lull, when the wave washed back out to sea, Seth handed Megan back the basket. “Hang on a tick.” She clutched it to her chest. He abruptly picked her up and waded ashore.

Surprise made her eyes big as her cheeks heated. She glanced shyly up at him, then over his shoulders to the rocks the waves crested over. “The tide has come in. I usually keep watch for things like that.”

“I must be a distraction for ya.” Seth grinned, while he set her down on the sand.

“When are you not a distraction to anyone?” she asked with one hand against his muscular chest.

“My mum said I’m always one to hog all the attention to myself.”

“I think she’s right.” She took a step back so she could pat his arm. “Thank you for keeping me from being swept off to sea.”

“That’s what mates are for.” He took the basket, with a look inside it, he added, “Besides, you were carrying me brekky.” Seth smirked down at her. “I really like yer top. You should wear it more often.”

“Oh!” Megan gave a mortified glance at her clingy camisole, which looked like it was spray painted on. Her erect nipples were making credible attempts to poke holes in the thin material. She snatched her brown shirt off the bush, hurrying to slip it on. Dammit, I’m never wearing this again.

Seth chuckled while he hauled the mussels up to their camp.

~* * *~

Windswept Shores: http://pinkpetalbooks.com/Windswept-Shores-Janice-Seagraves.html

Janice Seagraves website: http://janiceseagraves.org/

Janice Seagraves main blog: http://ladyjanice.blogspot.com/

Welcome Kathryn Meyer Griffith

2011-08-17T10:12:00.000-07:00

Please help me welcome my guest, Kathryn Meyer Griffith. She has an awesome book out about Egypt and Time Travel, which of course includes romance and conflict. Can you imagine being transported back to Egypt during ancient times? Yikes! Here's the video, please watch.

Now let's meet, Kathryn.

A word about Kathryn Meyer Griffith, August 2011...

Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21 and have had fourteen (nine romantic horror, one historical romance and two mysteries) previous novels published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.

I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-three years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have two quirky cats, Sasha and Cleo, and the four of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die.

Let me start with this: I have always loved ancient Egyptian stories since I was a child. I remember I wrote one of my first school papers at around eleven years old in pencil on the ancient Egyptians after dragging home an armful of musty smelling books from the library. I don’t recall exactly why I loved this particular time period and the people that lived in it but it might have had something to do with the movies The Ten Commandments (I was raised a Catholic), the horror mummy movies of the 1960’s and the early TV shows on Nefertiti and Cleopatra. I just had this affinity for the period.

It was February 1994 (I noted it on the outside of the manila folder where I keep a running book history on each novel) when I began Egyptian Heart. Originally I called it The Cursed Scarab. Later, I retitled it Egyptian Heart because I wanted it to more reflect the romance tale it had become.

I still had my agent, Lori Perkins, who’d sold four earlier novels for me to Zebra Books (Vampire Blood, 1991; The Last Vampire, 1992; Witches, 1993 and The Calling, 1994…after I’d sold my first three novels on my own to Leisure Books: Evil Stalks the Night, 1984: The Heart of the Rose, 1985; Blood Forge,1989) and she’d told me about a new romantic horror line that Silhouette was starting called the Shadows Line. They wanted to tap into the darker romantic paranormal market. Lori said they wanted the kind of story I wrote but with more romance. It was Silhouette after all. I’d been labeled as a horror writer from the get go, though all my novels blended genres; usually I wrote a romantic horror mixture with dashes of adventure, suspense and sometimes threw in a little history or mystery as well…but in those days the big publishers felt the need (and I think they still do) to squeeze a writer into one narrow slot. So I was a horror writer.

But by 1994 I’d lost my sweet editor at Zebra and a new one took her place...and over the next year he didn’t like anything I wrote for him and later that year Zebra unceremoniously dropped me and my latest book (Predator, a story about a dinosaur in Crater Lake…which never came out but still lingers like some weird ghost book in every computer on the global Internet) only six weeks away from going to the bookstore shelves. I’d begged the new editor not to call it Predator, bad title since there was a popular movie out of that name and it was nothing about a dinosaur, and the cover was awful, an empty boat on a lake…what!!! Having that book – my first ever – dumped like that was a crushing experience, let me tell you. I had a stack of finished, printed covers and had already done my final edits! I got to keep my advance but the book was officially dead. The new editor-that-didn’t-like-my-writing explained: “No one wants to read a book about a dinosaur.” And six months later Jurassic Park came out! The book is still sitting in a drawer somewhere and perhaps one day I’ll resurrect and finish it as well).

At that point, my agent wanted me to branch out so I wrote two manuscripts for the Silhouette Shadows Line or tried to. Egyptian Heart and Shadow Road (a romantic suspense about a woman truck driver driving a dangerous wintry route with a murderer on her tail, and a hitchhiker in her cab that she feels she’s falling in love with…and fears, at times, he’s the killer; which later I retitled and sold as Winter’s Journey). To make a long story short, Silhouette Shadows turned both down. Seems I had too much horror in them; not enough sex. I didn’t follow the formula. Sheesh. I’ve never liked depending too much on sex in any of my books or writing a book too predictable. The originality of the novel and the characters make the story for me.

After that my agent dropped me. Ah, the life of a writer.

So, then life (as it has many times in my 39 year writing career), family and job problems, and my other novels (I was into murder mysteries for years and sold two to Avalon Books), got in the way and Egyptian Heart and Shadow Road went into drawer hibernation until, oh, about 2004, when I rediscovered them, dug them out, rewrote them and began trying to sell them again. Sometimes, I’ve found, a book left alone in a dark cubbyhole ages like good wine. (Or sometimes it just turns to vinegar.)

Fast forward three years to 2007 and a new e-book (e-books still being considered a risky new-fangled craze at that time!) publisher called The Wild Rose Press contracted both and eventually a third called The Ice Bridge, a ghostly romantic murder mystery set on Mackinac Island, and published them. Good publisher. They treated me well. But in 2010 when I contracted my two newest novels, Before the End: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson (both romantic horror) my new publisher, Kim Richards Gilchrist at Damnation Books wanted to bring out all my old out-of-print novels again (going back to those early Leisure Books from the 1980’s) in print – and e-books for the first time ever. Seven old paperbacks. I’d rewrite them all, get new covers and they’d all live again. I was thrilled. And grateful. It would take a lot of work on both our parts but when we were done ALL my old novels would be in print again and in electronic form out in the world. I jumped right in.

Then when my two year contract (I was lucky, e-books still being new, it was only for two years; now most e-book publishers contract for five years or longer) ran out with The Wild Rose Press. I happily switched Egyptian Heart, Winter’s Journey, The Ice Bridge and a novella Don’t Look Back, Agnes to Eternal Press (Damnation Books sister company). Kim Richards, and her husband William, had just brought Realms of Fantasy Magazine into the fold, as well.

So. Egyptian Heart has had a very long history. Simply put, it’s a time travel paranormal romance set in the ancient times of Nefertiti and her heretic Pharaoh Akhenaton. It’s more romance than history, though I did a lot of research in 1994… originally for my 1994 Zebra horror paperback The Calling. I thought: why waste all this hard worked for research on just one novel? So I also used it for Egyptian Heart and an erotic short story, The Nameless One, one that Zebra had placed in their 1994 horror anthology Dark Seductions and now it’s available from Damnation Books.

The new cover for Egyptian Heart by Dawne Dominique is amazingly beautiful and Kim Richards herself was my editor. Thank you both.

So from a child’s love of ancient Egypt to the finished book, it’s been a long journey and goes to show all you writer’s out there that, yes, persistence does sometimes win out. And a good book never dies. It just ages like wine in a dark drawer.

I hope you’ll give Egyptian Heart a look and a read. The best way to describe it is through its blurb and so here it is:

Maggie Owen is a beautiful, spirited Egyptologist, but lonely. Even being in Egypt on a grant from the college she teaches at to search for an undiscovered necropolis she’s certain lies below the sands beyond the pyramids of Gizah doesn’t give her the happiness she’d hoped it would.

There’s always been and is something missing. Love.

Then her workmen uncover Ramose Nakh-Min’s ancient tomb and an amulet from his sarcophagus hurls her back to 1340 B.C – where she falls hopelessly in love with the man she was destined to be with, noble Ramose, who faithfully serves the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaton and his queen Nefertiti.

She’s fallen into perilous times with civil war threatening

Egypt

. She’s been mistaken for one of Ramose’s runaway slaves and with her light hair, jinn green eyes and fair skin she doesn’t fit in. Some say she’s magical and evil. Ramose’s favorite, Makere, tries to kill her.

The people, angry the Pharaoh has set his Queen aside and forced them to worship one god are rising up against him.

Maggie’s caught dangerously in the middle.

In the end, desperately in love, will she find a way to stay alive and with Ramose in ancient

Egypt

–and to make a difference in his world and history?

Because Maggie has finally found love. ***

And thank you for having me on your blog! Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Eternal Press buy link: http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615724437

You Tube Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cogCNYKzPqc

Novels and short stories from Kathryn Meyer Griffith:

Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure, 1984; Damnation Books, July 2012)

The Heart of the Rose (Leisure, 1985; Eternal Press Author’s Revised Edition out Nov.7, 2010)

Blood Forge (Leisure, 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out February 2012)

Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out July 2011)

The Last Vampire (Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out October 2010)

Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out April 2011)

The Nameless One (short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions;

Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out February 2011)

The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out October 2011)

Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)

All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2006)

Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007; Author’s Revised Edition out again from Eternal Press in August 2011)

Winter’s Journey (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition out again from Eternal Press in September 2011)

The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition out again from Eternal Press in November 2011)

Don’t Look Back, Agnes novella and bonus short story: In This House (2008; ghostly romantic short story out again from Eternal Press in January 2012)

BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (Out from Damnation Books June 2010)

The Woman in Crimson (Out from Damnation Books September 2010)

Her Websites:

http://www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith (to see all my book trailers with original music by my singer/songwriter brother JS Meyer)

http:// www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

http://www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.jacketflap.com/K.Griffith

http://www.shoutlife.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://romancewriterandreader.ning.com/profile/KathrynMeyerGriffith

http://romancebookjunction.ning.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

E-mail me at rdgriff@htc.net I love to hear from my readers.

Goodreads Reviews

2011-08-01T03:25:00.000-07:00

Be sure to check out my Goodreads Reviews page right here on this blog. I'm a tad behind on reviewing all the wonderful ebooks I've read, but I'm working on catching up. If you have a book you think I might enjoy, let me know. Cheers!!

Submission Call

2011-07-28T06:09:00.000-07:00

Rec'd this news release this morning and thought I'd share.

Legitimate press enters ebook arena; seeks authors with ready manuscripts
Palm Springs, California—A respected small press publisher for over two decades, Event Horizon Press announces its entry into today’s fastest-growing area of publishing: ebooks.
According to the firm’s general manager, Joseph Cowles, ebooks can be produced and published more quickly than printed books. “More books and faster turnaround means we need more writers with great manuscripts,” Cowles declares.
“EHP is presently looking for writers of action-packed novels and true stories ripped from the headlines. Our goal is to become known in the ebook world as a legitimate publisher of well-written works that captivate, entertain, and educate readers.”
Event Horizon Press authors are paid royalties on the sale of their books. “Ebook authors have their work exposed to the huge audiences of online retailers such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble,” says Cowles. “Ebook sales are said to exceed all other book categories combined.”
“In addition to applying professional skills in design, editing, production, and marketing within the electronic publishing arena, Event Horizon Press is also continuing to publish conventional printed books and periodicals,” Cowles affirms.
Authors are encouraged to request detailed information by emailing: SubmissionsInfo@wildblue.net

# # #

Butterfly Dreams

2011-07-23T04:15:00.000-07:00

Butterfly Dreams is my newest creation. It's romance driven with threads of mystery and of course humor. This is a full size novel and has recipes at the end. Now to consider a publisher. Hmm....

Lets meet Elaina Lee

2011-07-20T02:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers: This has been a great week. First you've been introduced to two wonderful authors, Elaina Lee and Sarah Ballance, now you're having an opportunity to know more about them. An interview of my guests is my favorite part of having a blog. (If you missed Sarah's interview and why both authors are visiting scroll down the page and read about her and their charitable cause.)

Today, we’ll interrogate Elaina Lee. I have an advantage as to knowing her writing ability because I’ve already read her latest ebook To Urn Her Love. Do we know near enough about her? I think not.

Elaina's book To Urn Her Love features a romantic story that we all can relate to — what if we had done things differently years ago? Did we miss the one? Fast forward 10 years and we find our heroine's life is an uphill struggle. Both of her parents are dead and she's trying to raise a sticky-fingered little brother. Then she comes face to face with him. Was the right decision made all those years ago? Is she glad she escaped or wish she had been caught? This is a must read for anyone who has siblings, especially for big sisters, and heartening for those who are an only child. lol

Before I launch into the nosy questions, Elaina, please tell us a bit about yourself.

Oh goodness, what to say! I live in Alabama, with my husband and our two sons. We have two goats, though they're rather useless, except as very 'green' lawnmowers. *grin* By day I'm a cover artist, by afternoon, a mom, wife, chef and maid, by night I'm a writer. Well… I try to be.

Now on for the grilling, I mean interview. Elaina, I’m curious as to where an idea comes from be it a book or a movie, so I have to ask. What was your inspiration for your release To Urn Her Love?

I actually just blogged about this with Sarah Ballance. *grin* When my grandmother died, the Monday before the tornado's struck, we had her cremated. The morning of Wednesday, April 27th, we went to pick up her urn. The tornado's hadn't happened yet, we were in fact getting everything taken care of before the worst of the weather was projected to hit. At the car, my mom and I debated about where to put grandma… in the backseat or the trunk? We didn't really want to put her in the trunk, she may have been in a metal container, but she was still grandma! However, my mom laughed and said "But how would we feel if someone stole her?" I told her I'd been thinking the exact same thing, so into the trunk she went. I commented to my mom what a funny story that would be, if someone really did steal an urn. So, To Urn Her Love was born. J

Loved the characters, especially the little brother (I’ve got one too). Are your characters based on people you know, made up or a combination of both?

Kyle (the teen brother) is a combination of all the teen information I've gleaned over the years, including the things I'm learning about sons’ behavior, LOL!

You’re known as a romantic suspense author, is there another genre burning inside you to be written?

I actually just finished a southern romantic comedy, if you can believe it! Now that it's completed though, I'm hoping to go back into the genre I do love writing the most, and that's romantic suspense.

Oh boy, humor. Can’t wait to read that story. Or perhaps you have written different genres already? Share.

I have a contemporary romance published with Decadent titled, First Kiss. Nothing dark or dangerous in that story, just fun, and really romantic!

Love the title. Some day I hope to write about time travel, is there a genre that you hope to tackle one day?

Historical. I started out writing historical and vowed to never write anything else. But upon critiques, I kept getting slammed for my vocabulary in dialogue. When I can figure out how to please everyone, I'll try my hand at historical again. After all, I have seven manuscripts that need rewritten. *wink*

Historical has darted across my mind. Elaina, I know you have young children, yet not only do you write but you’re a cover artist as well, how do you manage?

Well, I have a toddler AND a teenager, LOL! My toddler keeps himself amused when I do my cover design, as I only work for about five hours a day on it (anymore and my head begins to pound). In the evenings I sit on the couch and write when he's not climbing all over me. My teenager is pretty self-sufficient J

Toddler and teen!! Bless your heart. Do you have another talent we should know about?

I don't think so… I can't sing, I can't draw, I can barely keep my house clean… *grin*

Have you ever killed off a character because you were angry at someone?

Actually, I can say no to this one! If I kill a character off it's because they have to die to progress the plot.

Sometimes names just pop into my head and other times I struggle to find a name I’m happy with for a story. Where do you get the names for your characters?

I get a letter. My characters always want their first names to start with a certain letter. From there I go to various baby naming websites (don’t we all?) until I see one that just fits or my character starts jumping up and down and pointing.

A certain letter? That’s different. What do you know now that you are published that you didn’t know beforehand and you wished you had?

Comma splices and Impossible Simultaneous Actions… Crit partners are invaluable, but nothing compares to what you'll learn from a good editor.

Remind me to tell you about the Comma Splice & Tense Police Patrol organized just for me in my crit group. Lol What was the best writing advice someone gave you?

My first six months in a crit group are a blur of constant professional advice… I can't remember which one was best. J

What was the worst? Did you know it at the time?

Studying someone else's style to write by. And no, I did not. I was actually rather offended by the suggestion. Don't tell me to write like someone else, just tell me what you felt was missing or how I can improve the scene.

True, true. Your voice is your voice. Any WIP? Care to share?

I am about to start the sequel to my romantic suspense, Written in Blood, tentatively titled, Written in Fear.

Thank you for being such a gracious guest.

Thank you for being such a gracious guest and having me!!!

www.elainalee.com

www.forthemusedesign.com

elaina-lee.blogspot.com

BLURB -

Caylie Abrahms bad day gets worse when the teen brother she's responsible for proudly hands her a gift. Just wanting to show how much he appreciates all his sister does for him, Kyle steals what he believes is an ornate glass vase. The gift is anything but however, and now Caylie has to find the owner of an urn. Worst yet, she has to explain her dear brother stole someone's loved one.

Against all odds she learns the urn belongs to Rick Marshall, her best friend from college, the man she'd poured her heart out to and been rejected by. She never thought she'd see him again, let alone have to hand him back his father in glass. Will her resolve remain strong in his presence, or will she suffer another broken heart?

EXCERPT -

In silence, they walked the corridor flanking the stairs to the second story. Kyle stayed behind, digging through the plate of refreshments. They passed two doors and Caylie began to wonder just how large his home was. She dared not look around too much, afraid she'd grow jealous and feel even more insignificant than she already did. There were no disillusions in her life, she knew she was poor. Never before though had she felt impoverished. Until now. However, she did keep a roof over hers and Kyle's head and they never went without a meal. Those were at least things she could be proud of. He opened a door to the left and motioned inside.

“On the desk. May I ask first though, who you're calling?"

With a sheepish smile, she held up the card. “A cab, I...accidentally locked my keys in my car this afternoon."

He stepped inside and closed the door. “I can give you a ride home."

Shaking her head, she took the card between both her hands and stared down at it. Anything not to look at him and his way too handsome face and the body that proved he did hard labor. A few strands of gray stood out in his dark brown hair, slight lines

appeared when he smiled, but other than that, the man was still dangerously good-looking. Only now he had a few years that took away that fresh-from-school look and a filled out frame that came with manhood. Alone in a room with him was so not where she

wanted to be.

“I couldn't possibly ask for anything more from you. We have done more than enough."

“No," he said softly and the light, musky scent of his cologne filled her nose as he moved closer. “Your brother has done enough. You did nothing but return what was stolen, hours after it happened, I might add. You did me a huge favor, especially since

my mother happened to show up to get a good look at the urn."

“Something you wouldn't have even had to worry about if my brother hadn't taken it in the first place." She shook her head and put some distance between them, moving towards the phone. “I'm sorry, I can't accept anything else from you. Agreeing not to

press charges and then giving my brother an opportunity to do some good...it's more than enough, more than I could thank you for."

Before she could reach the phone, his hand wrapped around her upper arm. His touch sent waves of longing through her body. Not wanting to feel anything stronger, she brushed his hand away, thankful he released her without hesitation. His eyes darkened

with anger and something she couldn't place and wasn't sure if she wanted to.

BUY LINK -

TO URN HER LOVE

If actual link is preferred -http://www.astraeapress.com/#ecwid:category=1011841&mode=product&product=4810596

Talking to Sarah Balance

2011-07-19T03:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers: the interview of my victims, I mean guests, is my favorite part. Elaina Lee and Sarah Balance will be in the hot seat today and tomorrow.

Today, let’s find out more about Sarah Balance. I have an advantage as to her writing ability because I’ve already read Sarah’s latest ebook HAWTHORNE. Take my word for it, you don’t want to miss reading this yummy paranormal. But I don’t know near enough about our dear writer.

Before I launch into nosy questions, Sarah, please tell us a bit about yourself.

How much do I love you? You read my book and you still let me come over to play! LOL. Okay, seriously, while not writing I am a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom to six kids ages one to thirteen. I love my husband to pieces (sometimes I'd like that to be literal), and even after fifteen years together he's still my best friend and way better than sleep, if you know what I mean. ;c) In addition to HAWTHORNE, I'm twice published with Noble Romance and have a new one—UNFORGIVEN—coming August 22 to kick off my suspense series.

Now on to the grilling, I mean interview. Sarah, I’m curious as to where an idea comes from be it a book or a movie, so I have to ask. What was your inspiration for your release HAWTHORNE?

This one was tough. Elaina Lee contacted me near the end of March to ask if I'd be willing to contribute to the Astraea Press charity novella project. I spent about two days avoiding her email, LOL, then I said yes. A month before the deadline, however, I had nothing. In my "What was I thinking?" lament to my husband, he came up with the idea of a ghost story. Not long thereafter, the ending hit me (and you'll have to read the story to understand the significance there), and with that I was able to go back to the beginning. At that point, the words FLEW. And it was a good thing. I finished the day before the deadline, and just ten hours after I submitted HAWTHORNE I had a contract. The entire experience, from Elaina's email to the lightning-fast acceptance, is still surreal!

Loved the characters, especially had my eye on Noah. Are your characters based on people you know, made up or a combination of both?

Aw, thanks. I tend to draw my characters from a combination of people I've met and life experience, but Noah was truly someone from my heart. Not to sound like a schmuck, but I didn't have to think him. I felt him. I believe readers have really responded to him as well, which is one big reason there will be a novel-length sequel to HAWTHORNE.

You’re known as a romantic suspense author, is there another genre burning inside you to be written? Or perhaps you have written number genres? Share.

Romantic suspense owns me! My first release was a romance, but when I wrote it I never thought it would be published. I didn't even want it to be published, LOL! I just wanted to prove to myself I could write a book, so I did. But as I neared the end of that first manuscript and had thoughts of subbing, it hit me I really wanted to write suspense. Right now I have about six novels planned, all romantic suspense. There's something extra tasty adding that element of danger to romance, and weaving clues and plot is epic for me. I love it!

Some day I hope to write about time travel, is there a genre that you hope to tackle one day?

Right now my plate is so full of romantic suspense plots—including the new series with Noble—that I can't see around the genre, LOL. HAWTHORNE, with the ghostly element, is considered paranormal and no doubt I'll go there again, but that's the extent of my ambition to stray from suspense.

Sarah, I know you have several children, how do you find the time to write? Did you hear the envy in my voice? Honestly, I’m impressed that you manage to write one word.

I have to give MAD credit to my husband. Although I tend to trend back and forth from waking up early to write to staying up late, right now my routine is to go into hiding after dinner. I put the baby to bed and my husband threatens the other five with laundry or dishwasher duty should they even think about bothering me. About once an hour someone will come see if I need anything, so I have regular coffee and cappuccino deliveries should I desire them. ;c)

Oh wow, what a husband you have. Have you ever killed off a character because you were angry with someone?

I've never changed the fate of a character for that reason alone, but I think it's fair to say I've written some parts with a great deal of enthusiasm after dealing with someone IRL.

Very diplomatic answer. Sometimes names just pop into my head and other times I struggle to find a name I’m happy with for a story. Where do you get the names for your characters?

I'm pretty much the same way. When they don’t hit me immediately, I spend a lot of times looking at baby name lists, which feels comfortable after naming six kids, LOL. But I prefer to look up themed lists, like southern, redneck, and cowboy names. I avoid uber trendy-for-now names for characters who weren't born in the last decade, and to that end I've found checking the Social Security list for a certain decade is awesome. I also find a lot of first names I like by looking at lists of surnames, a technique I discovered quite by accident while on the hunt for a last name. I probably spend too much time choosing, but after hours of angst finally one will be so right, and that's a great feeling.

Yes, I know the feeling. What do you know now that you are published that you didn’t know beforehand and you wished you had?

There's something to be said for going through the whole process the first time that really takes the edge off. I'm a timid, fearful person. I don't like to be the center of attention and I have a really hard time putting myself out there. As an author, that's ALL you do. You pour your heart into your work, and once it's out there you can't take it back. Publishing happened as a whirlwind, unexpected experience for me; I never aspired to be an author. It took me six months to write my first novel, which was accepted on the first query. I enjoyed the experience, but if I could do it over I would talk myself out of the fear of it all happening and just rock out the milestones. It truly gets better every time!

What was the best writing advice someone gave you?

Crits, crits, crits. If not for my crit partner, I wouldn't be published at all. I don't know how she didn't run for the hills when she saw my first draft for the first time, but her patient early corrections turned blissfully deadly as my skills grew. Authors tend not to like crits, and it is hard to see your work marked up, but once you have a good crit partner (who isn't afraid to point out your weaknesses) the possibilities are limitless. I'm always nervous when I see a crit in my inbox, but it's also really exciting to know when I get to the other side of my edits I'm going to have a stronger story. A good critter is invaluable for any author.

I couldn’t agree more, I love my crit partner, except for the times I want to strangle him. But he’s good and brings out the best in me. What was the worst advice? Did you know it at the time?

I wouldn’t call it bad advice, but overall pressure (from myself—not from the publisher). The sex in my first novel is more graphic than I was comfortable with, but I think it goes back to my extreme introvert shell. I'm not at all embarrassed by it, but I think I pushed myself a bit out of my (admittedly limited) comfort zone in order to make that story fit some sort of mold I had in my head. I've since matured into it, LOL, but there is something to be said about being true to yourself with your words.

Any WIP? Care to share?

I just started the second title in my romantic suspense series with Noble. The first book, UNFORGIVEN, comes out on August 22 so I'm challenging myself to see how much of book two I can knock out before then. I've also got the sequel to HAWTHORNE on my radar and a short story in the works for the November Noble Authors Blog Tour. Eeep!

Come on August 22. And I can’t wait for the Hawthorne sequel. Thank you for being such a gracious guest.

Thank you, Cassie, for hosting me! (Um, sorry about the furniture.) I appreciate your help in spreading the word about HAWTHORNE and the other charity titles from Astraea Press. It's a wonderful thing to know my work will make a small difference for someone else, and at only $3 I hope some new-to-me readers will take a chance and scope me out. Hopefully (and if nothing else) I'm tolerable for charity, LOL. As for you and everyone else who has grabbed a copy, thank you so much for your support!

Website: http://www.sarahballance.com/
Blog: http://sarahballance.wordpress.com/
Hawthorne buy link: http://www.astraeapress.com/#ecwid:category=1011841&mode=product&product=4810595
Noble titles buy link: https://www.nobleromance.com/Authors/97

HAWTHORNE

Blurb:

After a terrifying encounter with the unexplained, it took ten years and the news of her grandmother’s passing for Emma Grace Hawthorne to return to her childhood home. She sought peace in saying a proper goodbye, but what she found was an old love, a sordid family history, and a wrong only she could right.

Living in the shadow of Hawthorne Manor, Noah Garrett never forgot about Emma Grace. In a house full of secrets, his search for missing documents revealed a truth that could cost him everything. What he found gave Emma the freedom to walk away from the mansion, her heart free and clear, but at what price to Noah?

BUY LINK: http://astraeapress.com/#ecwid:category=1011841&mode=product&product=4810595

HAWTHORNE excerpt

Chapter One

The car slowed to a stop and a decade's worth of memories tumbled onto the sun-blanched asphalt.

Hawthorne Manor.

The hand-painted sign hadn't changed in years. In the thick, damp air filling the Louisiana landscape, the wood display remain inexplicably unaffected. There it sat—every meticulously scripted letter as crisp and clean as the stark white walls of the manor it lauded, oblivious to the passage of time.

Emma Hawthorne tensed in the seat of the Mustang convertible, staring at her past with ice sluicing her spine Anywhere else, the view would have been gorgeous. The drive, lined on both sides with live oak laden with Spanish moss, was the South personified. At the end, Hawthorne Manor held court. Pristine, proud, the boastful antebellum home beamed, lording over its acreage.

But it harbored the unspeakable. No amount of time could erase what happened to her on the other side of the expanse of green lawn. Nothing could change what she'd seen there. Some might say she was crazy—that she'd imagined or invented the whole ordeal—but her scars were all the proof she needed. Whether the shadows lurking behind the façade of the picturesque plantation were real or born of an overactive imagination, there was no way she was going back into that house.

Especially not for a dead woman.

Sparing a glance in the rearview, Emma steeled herself against a trembling in her hands that threatened to overtake her body. She released a pent-up breath, her heart settling into a less acrobatic rhythm at the thought of leaving. She didn't have to stay here.

Let the South win this one. She was going home.

A split second after she decided to go, something caught her eye. She blinked, trying to see through the swaying canopy of leaves and moss, certain a figure stood atop the widow's walk straddling the roofline of the house. But no one—

Something brushed the car, rocking it. Swallowing panic, Emma tried to tear her focus from Hawthorne Manor, but fear kept her from looking anywhere else. Time and distance hadn't done her any favors; she was a fool for coming anywhere near this place, much less with the ragtop down.

The car rocked harder. The something refused to be ignored.

Fighting the grip of panic tightening her throat—fighting the ghosts of her past—Emma forced herself to look away from the house, toward the intrusion over her left shoulder.

The first thing she saw was an aged set of gnarled fingers resting on the door, blue automotive paint showing through an ugly translucence.

The second was the face—withered, centurion, and expressionless. Haunting.

Familiar.

Her.

Emma screamed.

****

It couldn't be her.

Noah Garrett tore down the drive, slapping through a muggy afternoon haze comprised of mosquitoes and humidity. He couldn't know that scream, but he felt the connection the moment the sound of her fear pierced the thick air.

Emma Grace.

The one reason he allowed himself to stagnate on the old plantation, long after life and reason moved on without him. Long after she had.

A blue Mustang sat at the end of the driveway. He wondered if it could be hers—even as he knew it impossible—but she was nowhere in sight.

He slowed to a trot. The sprint left him drenched with sweat and not entirely disappointed his imagination had gotten away from him. His dream of one more chance to see Emma Grace had never included himself as a dripping mess. He wiped the moisture from his brow, fast concluding the car must belong to a tourist. They often parked at the end of the drive and took pictures of the condescending mansion most thought beautiful. He assumed the intrusion seemed small to their frequent guests, but the constant ding of the hidden bell announcing a visitor could drive a man to the edge.

As if losing Emma Grace hadn't already accomplished that.

Noah closed in on the convertible, giving the nearby grounds a cursory look. The lawn was meticulous, the beds overflowing with sprays of purple garden phlox which trailed around the bend in the road and disappeared. A riot of white and rust-red irises backed the smaller purple flowers, their leaves deep green and glossy. Overhead, Spanish moss swayed only occasionally atop a maze of live oak, more likely a result of a passing swarm of insects than an actual air current. The land was still. If there were tourists snapping photos of the historic plantation—or doing anything else—he didn't see them. But someone had been there, the seemingly familiar scream so real.

Wasn't it always?

Resigned to another night alone with his memories, Noah pivoted.

And found himself nose to nose with Emma Grace.

Astounded, he opened his mouth, then closed it. He wanted to reach for her, but his arms refused the notion; they hung uselessly by his sides, the effort futile. His mouth wasn't much on cooperation, either. Finally, he found his tongue. "Em—"

Her expression cut him off. Green eyes wide, skin pale, her small frame shaking, she spoke. "I saw her, Noah. She's back." The words, nearly soundless, seemed to catch in the thick air. Lingering. Threatening.

And ripping the heart from his chest.

BUY LINK: http://astraeapress.com/#ecwid:category=1011841&mode=product&product=4810595

Welcome Elaina Lee and Sarah Ballance

2011-07-18T04:24:00.000-07:00

We authors write about worlds filled with wealth, fantasy and dreams that come true eventually. And where at the end of the story, everything is perfect. Real life isn't like that.

Two top notch romantic suspense authors, Elaina Lee and Sarah Ballance, have written two great stories and all proceeds will go to help the survivors of the Alabama tornado and Japan's earthquake. Let's do our part and help those in need. Just so you know, I've purchased and read both books. Excellent stories. Only complaint -- they ended too soon.

I'll turn the floor over to my guests.

I'd like to thank Cassie for letting us share her space today as we raise awareness about the continuing struggles and needs of those affected by natural disasters. Please join us in giving to those to who need it most and consider making a small donation in return for a short story for good cause. - Elaina

BASIC CHARITY PROMO PIECE (TO BE PERSONALIZED FOR EACH GUEST SPOT)
When disaster strikes, there's a moment when we forget all boundaries. Geographic, political, and socioeconomic divisions fall, and there, for some of the most painful, beautiful moments in time, we are one.

Then—hour by hour, day by day, week by week—the vast majority of us lucky enough to do so will move on. As the headlines change our focus moves elsewhere, and save for the occasional media update, many of us don't look back.

Some, however, struggle to look ahead. Here's a glimpse at the staggering numbers and the broken realities affected residents of Alabama and Japan must face every day.

ALABAMA TORNADOES – April 27, 2011
The mile-wide F5 tornado that literally sliced the state of Alabama in half stayed on the ground for an astonishing 300 miles—a record-breaking distance, according to National Geographic. It also left a path of utter devastation in its wake, and recovery hasn't been easy, as evidenced by these facts reported by blog.al.com.
25,081 families were denied FEMA insurance, including many whose homes had been wiped completely off their foundations. FEMA's reason? Insufficient damage.
Following the April tornadoes, FEMA deployed 523 inspectors to the region. Together, they've inspected over 5,000 properties a day. That's a lot of destruction, folks.
Of the $4 million in initial FEMA aid for Alabama, $3.1 million went for temporary housing alone.

JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE – March 11, 2011
A June 29 update from Red Cross Japan reveals the following sober statistics:
75,215 people from the three most affected prefectures are still living in shelters or other temporary housing. 7,427 are still missing, their loved ones fearing the worst.
119,776 claims for unemployment were filed between March 11 and June 8 in the three most affected prefectures.
97,183 people have been evacuated from the area surrounding the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. 35, 514 have left the Fukushima prefecture, forced to start over with nothing.
You Can Help … Today

Authors Elaina Lee and Sarah Ballance, through the generosity of the Astraea Press charity program, are proud to announce 100% of profits from their novellas below will go toward Alabama and Japan Disaster Relief, respectively. To help raise awareness, every comment on their individual blogs or guest blog posts (including this one!) from July 12 through August 8 will double as an entry into a weekly drawing for a $10 gift e-certificate or a free e-book. Winners will be announced on their blogs and contacted via e-mail. As an additional token of appreciation for your support, if you have purchased either of their titles you are invited to contact Elaina or Sarah for a free gift (while supplies last).

TO URN HER LOVE | Elaina Lee | romance | BUY LINK | BLOG

BLURB -

EXCERPT -

In silence, they walked the corridor flanking the stairs to the

second story. Kyle stayed behind, digging through the plate of

refreshments. They passed two doors and Caylie began to wonder

just how large his home was. She dared not look around too much,

afraid she'd grow jealous and feel even more insignificant than she

already did. There were no disillusions in her life, she knew she

was poor. Never before though had she felt impoverished. Until

now. However, she did keep a roof over hers and Kyle's head and

they never went without a meal. Those were at least things she

could be proud of. He opened a door to the left and motioned

inside.

ʺOn the desk. May I ask first though, who you're calling?"

With a sheepish smile, she held up the card. ʺA cab, I...

accidentally locked my keys in my car this afternoon."

He stepped inside and closed the door. ʺI can give you a ride

home."

Shaking her head, she took the card between both her hands

and stared down at it. Anything not to look at him and his way too

handsome face and the body that proved he did hard labor. A few

strands of gray stood out in his dark brown hair, slight lines

appeared when he smiled, but other than that, the man was still

dangerously good-looking. Only now he had a few years that took

away that fresh-from-school look and a filled out frame that came

with manhood. Alone in a room with him was so not where she

wanted to be.

ʺI couldn't possibly ask for anything more from you. We

have done more than enough."

ʺNo," he said softly and the light, musky scent of his cologne

filled her nose as he moved closer. ʺYour brother has done enough.

You did nothing but return what was stolen, hours after it

happened, I might add. You did me a huge favor, especially since

my mother happened to show up to get a good look at the urn."

ʺSomething you wouldn't have even had to worry about if

my brother hadn't taken it in the first place." She shook her head

and put some distance between them, moving towards the phone.

ʺI'm sorry, I can't accept anything else from you. Agreeing not to

press charges and then giving my brother an opportunity to do

some good...it's more than enough, more than I could thank you

for."

Before she could reach the phone, his hand wrapped around

her upper arm. His touch sent waves of longing through her body.

Not wanting to feel anything stronger, she brushed his hand away,

thankful he released her without hesitation. His eyes darkened

with anger and something she couldn't place and wasn't sure if she

wanted to.

BUY LINK -

TO URN HER LOVE

If actual link is preferred - http://www.astraeapress.com/#ecwid:category=1011841&mode=product&product=4810596

HAWTHORNE | Sarah Ballance | mystery, romance | BUY LINK | BLOG

HAWTHORNE

Blurb:

BUY LINK: http://astraeapress.com/#ecwid:category=1011841&mode=product&product=4810595

HAWTHORNE excerpt

Chapter One

The car slowed to a stop and a decade's worth of memories tumbled onto the sun-blanched asphalt.

Hawthorne Manor.

Especially not for a dead woman.

Let the South win this one. She was going home.

The car rocked harder. The something refused to be ignored.

Fighting the grip of panic tightening her throat—fighting the ghosts of her past—Emma forced herself to look away from the house, toward the intrusion over her left shoulder.

The first thing she saw was an aged set of gnarled fingers resting on the door, blue automotive paint showing through an ugly translucence.

The second was the face—withered, centurion, and expressionless. Haunting.

Familiar.

Her.

Emma screamed.

****

It couldn't be her.

Emma Grace.

The one reason he allowed himself to stagnate on the old plantation, long after life and reason moved on without him. Long after she had.

A blue Mustang sat at the end of the driveway. He wondered if it could be hers—even as he knew it impossible—but she was nowhere in sight.

As if losing Emma Grace hadn't already accomplished that.

Wasn't it always?

Resigned to another night alone with his memories, Noah pivoted.

And found himself nose to nose with Emma Grace.

And ripping the heart from his chest.

BUY LINK: http://astraeapress.com/#ecwid:category=1011841&mode=product&product=4810595

If you'd like to receive free promotional materials, please contact Elaina @ forthemusedesigns at gmail dot com or Sarah @ sarah at sarahballance dot com. Available while supplies last.

SOURCES: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/04/110428-tuscaloosa-birmingham-alabama-news-tornadoes-science-nation/ | AL.BLOG.COM http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/06/alabama_tornado_recovery_fema.html |RED CROSS JAPAN http://www.jrc.or.jp/vcms_lf/kokusai_290611.pdf | Photos by Elaina Lee (July 9, 2011)

High School Class Reunion

2011-06-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

Went to high school class reunion last night -- had tons of fun. Didn't leave until midnight. What made it so much fun was the auction we had to fill the coffers. Treasury is low but bidding ran high. It was for a good cause -- US. lol I'm not much of a gambler so I only spent $10.00 and got a gag gift, but the butterfly bag was pretty.

Welcome one "hawt" sommer-time treat -- Sommer Marsden

2011-06-23T03:39:00.000-07:00

For a real “sommer-time” treat, help me welcome sexy Sommer Marsden. She is one of the most prolific erotica writers I know. Not only is she an author, she is also an editor and publisher.

Sommer & I became friends back when we were contributing authors to Ruthie’s Club, once the largest illustrated ezine on the net. Ahhh sweet memories. It was Sommer who urged me to go forth and submit elsewhere. So, thanks to her, I went out and mingled or I might have closed up like Ruthie’s.

Dear readers, get your glass of lemonade or wine and let’s get everyone acquainted with the lovely Sommer.

Before I launch into nosy, uh I mean inquiring questions, Sommer dear, would you like to introduce yourself?

Sure. Hi, I’m Sommer and I deal in smut and smut related activities. I typed ‘must’ instead of smut at first and maybe that’s why I write erotica. I think sex (in any form) is a must for a happy, healthy life!

Oh, my yes. Now on to the fun. When did you start writing?

When I was in Kindergarten. I have blatantly ripped off Winnie the Pooh, A Wrinkle in Time and various Stephen King stories between my 5s and my 20s when I found my own voice.

Knew I should have asked if you started with a crayon in your hand. When did you discover your flair for erotica?

Totally by accident. In 2005 I was writing my second mystery novel and went online to research something (I think it was the colors used by Howard Johnson’s, believe it or not) and stumbled over an erotica site. So I read the story and I thought two things almost simultaneously: Hunh, that was a good story and I wonder if I could do that.

So, I sat down and wrote a story, quickly Googled markets, found Ruthie’s Club, sent the story in and woke the next day to an acceptance and a request for more stories if I had them. I think the whole span of events was about 48 hours.

Okay, I think I know the answer, but have to ask, was your first erotica story published at Ruthie’s or elsewhere? Where?

Oops! See above. Totally, Ruthie’s Club. My first, second and third etc. I credit them for helping me hone my abilities. I miss them…still!

Ruthie’s doesn’t surprise me but the year did. We started at Ruthie’s the same year. Cool. Regardless of where your first story was published or its genre, what was your immediate reaction when you realized that your story was accepted? Especially, that you were getting paid for your work?

Ah, that was a poetry piece, I think. Or maybe a short mystery piece as myself. My reaction? Loud and noisy and crazed and then I’d calm down and then I’d do it again ;)

Same reaction with me. Since you write so many genres or perhaps the word is styles of erotica, which one draws you the most and why?

For me, it used to be straight up contemporary erotica because paranormal scared the poo out of me. But then I gave paranormal a good try and now I do things ranging from ghosts (see my Coming Together book to benefit Leukemia and Lymphoma Society) to various paranormal creatures to my brand new, freshly minted new series that contains…zombies!

For the girl who said she’d never do paranormal because she said there were not enough rules, I sure do write my fair share of angels, shifters, ghosts and dead things.

Is there one genre that you want to tackle, but never have? Why or why not?

Steampunk. Why? I still don’t have a handle on what it truly is and yet it seems to be everywhere. So, I challenged myself to write some non-sex horror stuff last year as myself and I did it. I guess my new challenge is to write at least one Steampunk piece that makes me happy. 

Let me know when you do, I want to read it. Recently you wrote a live story and posted a chapter daily. Your loyal followers, which included me, loved the experience. Another story in the near future?

I hope so! I have to admit, Wanderlust really got my juices flowing, so to speak. It was a great mood booster and a great exercise as a writer. I also loved the interaction with readers and feel like I really made some new friends, folks I still love to see checking in on Unapologetic Fiction.

I think that if the right story idea grabs me, there will definitely be a new serial in the future. I don’t know if it will end up being as long. Wanderlust truly shocked me, I have to say. But we’d see how long the new one ended up being together, which was the fun of writing a live book!

For anyone who missed this opportunity, perhaps Sommer will share the details of where we can purchase a copy of Wanderlust. I understand that it will soon be available in download and print. When? Where?

Soon! I have some projects I have to wrap up first. LOL. But then, for those folks who’ve asked, I will be putting Wanderlust out in one document (a very long book!) for sale in ebook—and hopefully, if I can finagle it—print. For those folks like me who are too lazy to go and read it in chunks backwards on my blog.

Mostly likely it will be on Kindle, All Romance ebooks, Bookstrand etc. All the usual suspects. Once I crack the Createspace code I plan to get it up in print (along with Gritty that’s still sitting there trying to be patient and waiting on me.)

Absolutely loved your book, Inhuman, is there a sequel? Any more like this one?

Thank you, thank you!  As of right now, Inhuman was the last one of the Seekers books. The first two have just been re-released as COMING TOGETHER WITH SOMMER to benefit LLS. I hope to put Inhuman out to benefit a charity also. Then maybe that will give me the kick in the bum I need to write another? Who knows! (cruel of me, yes?)

The last one? How the … uh, pardon me. ((clears throat)) What do you know now that you are published that you didn’t know beforehand and you wished you had?

Just because you’re published doesn’t mean you’re famous, rich or any of the stuff so many people still assume. It is very much a job most days, though I’m blessed that I love it. I think some people think they’re going to be published and become Stephen King or something. Not so. Not unless you’re one in a million, have a horseshoe up your butt and, well…write like Stephen King!

What was the best writing advice someone gave you?

Write. Every day if you can. Write.

Great advice. What was the worst? Did you know it at the time?

Read books about how other writers do it. I think that is total crap. I write the way I write. You write the way your write. I think you should brush up on formal rules of writing and good writing etiquette and all that, but do not spend your precious time mimicking someone else. Use that time to write and write and write and find your own voice!

If you must read a book about how another writer does it, I recommend Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing. It’s the only book of that kind you’ll need.

Again, great advice. This is a no brainer, but do you have any WIP? Care to share?

Ha! What a loaded question.  I am currently editing the sequel to a book that comes out in October (paranormal smut!), and editing Wanderlust so I can get that project going. And I’m about to jump into two separate books, and the third zombie novella, and am working on a few shorts I promised to various folks. So that’s about it!

Thank you for being such a gracious guest. Sommer, the floor is yours as soon as I untie you. There you go.

Thanks for having me! It’s been a blast and a half. I just wish I’d remembered to bring a nice box of wine and a fist full of crazy straws.

Excerpt from WE KILL DEAD THINGS (Zombie Exterminators Book #1)
Buy Link: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/m8/315-200-107-489-1--we-kill-dead-things-by-sommer-marsden.html

Also on Kindle, at ARe, Bookstrand etc.

Prologue
Honestly, the whole thing is Noah’s fault. We were all doing our normal closing-time bitchfest in the food square at Parktowne Mall and not really paying attention, when the first creeper showed up. That’s what we call them—the zombies—creepers.
Anyway, the first one showed up, and I assumed it was just another stoner looking for a slushie. Nope. It took all of my college logic skills to finally realize the creeper was up to no good when it lunged over the counter at me.
Garrity—Chris to his enemies—the object of my not-so-secret lust, let out a yell and rushed out with the bat we keep behind the counter at Smash It, the slushy and juice shop we run. He hit the guy on the shoulder—intending to do no real damage—but the bat sort of sank in and then made a squishy noise.
“He reeks,” I’d yelled, or something equally brilliant.
Then Noah was running out of Mamma’s Pies pizza stand with a meat cleaver of all things. Which he promptly buried in the guy’s skull. Thank God he was carving up Italian beef at the time.
The creeper gave me a stunned look that almost made me feel bad for him and Noah gave the cleaver another little shove and something cracked deep in the dead guy’s skull.
The dead guy fell on me.
Gross.
That had been the first creeper, and Noah had taken it out (being the only one smart enough to have the news on in his food court stall so he actually had news about the suddenly mobile undead). Garrity had to take out six more before we got the main doors locked. Nick Cahill—main man at The Beef Barn—found one making the moves on a side of beef in the walk-in. He took it out with an electric knife.
The night was pretty much what bizarre is made of, and when we found ourselves clustered on the merry-go-round drinking a good bottle of wine pilfered from the gourmet place, Noah made a joke.
“We should start a new business,” he laughed. He was a business major, after all. “Our slogan could be We Kill Dead Things.”
Like I said, it’s all Noah’s fault. Because that is what we do now. A year later, and we’re pretty damn good at it. We kill dead things.
Chapter One
“Little help over here,” Noah yelled. I tossed him a small axe from my pack, and he caught it with one hand. Noah’s the one with surfer boy hair, pale skin, freckles and an ass any girl would want to bite.
I watched him take the axe and with three economical blows behead our zombie friend.
“Nice.” Garrity laughed—sometimes I think he enjoys his work too much—and did his own damage with a claw hammer he kept tucked in the back of his jeans. How he sat on that damn thing all day is beyond me. Garrity is the one with the dark, dark hair and the blue, blue eyes. He makes you want to—well, if you’re a girl—he makes you want to take your pants off for him. Hey, he might even make you want to take your pants off if you’re a guy, too. “Head’s up, Poppy,” he called out.
I turned—and lucky I did—because a big, bad and ugly was shuffling toward me like I was his last supper. “Not today, buddy.” My weapon of choice is a gun. I find it cleaner to just put a bullet in their brains. Or what’s left of them. Since my dad was a cop for thirty years, I know my way around a firearm. One shot and the creeper was down.
The boys still think one day I’m going to shoot them. I’ve told them that won’t happen as long as they behave.
“Where’s Cahill?” I called. Noah was sweeping the perimeter and Garrity was checking on his latest kill.
“He’s out back. The owners said the creepers come in through the back bushes.”
“Great. Nothing like sneaking off away from the pack,” I growled. I waited for the boys then we went around the side of the big farmhouse as a unit.
“Where are these bush—” I didn’t need to finish that sentence because Cahill was being tugged by six waving arms into the giant stand of bushes. “Jesuspleezus,” I sighed. “I can’t get a shot. He’s all tangled up with them.”
Garrity moved forward and so did Noah. Together they waded into the overgrown foliage and tugged two of the creepers free. That left Cahill enough room to turn fast and dispatch the creeper with his favorite butchering knife from his shop.
Cahill’s arms are about as big as my thighs and freckled. There’s barely any hair on them but what is there is a ginger-colored down. His eyes are bright green, and they can see right through to your soul. Or, at least, it feels like it. I watched him behead the thing with a fierce grunt and an even fiercer swipe of his knife.
Then I plopped onto the grass trying to catch my breath and get my heart to slow down. It was too damn fast in my chest. I felt like I was floating. Adrenaline cocktail, anyone?
“Come on, Poppy.” Garrity hauled me to my feet, and we all met up around the owner’s gazebo.
“They’ll be home tomorrow. We’ve secured the area. Those are the only creepers we could find. Anything else pops up they can give us a shout.”
I nodded. “Neighbors?”
“All alive and accounted for so far.”
Unlike the movies you see about the undead, they don’t spring up overnight in waves. They spring up one at a time like a flu victim—and like any other disease, there are some naturally immune. My own mother was bitten by the guy who broke in and killed my dad a few months back when this whole thing started. She’s a widow with a wicked scar but beyond that, totally fine.
You just can’t tell if you’ll be one of the immune or one of the infected. Best bet is not to get bitten.
“Good. Now can we go home and sleep? I’m tired.” I was tired, but I felt like a wuss saying it aloud—occupational hazard when you work with all men.
“Yep. Sleep is on the way.”
Garrity ruffled my short blue hair and I felt the touch reach my pussy. Damn him.
He leaned in, pressed his lips to my ear and said “How long is this stuff going to be blue, anyhow?”
“Until I get tired of the blue,” I growled.
He shrugged, that lazy, sexy boy shrug some men have, and said “Just asking. Don’t get all knotted up.”
I rolled my eyes, and when I turned I caught Cahill staring at me. That made my stomach curl in on itself. Those vibrant eyes on me. We were all messy and gross and banged up, but Cahill wore it well. So did Garrity. Poor Noah, he was staring at Cahill as usual. Noah would climb Cahill like a tree if he could get away with it. Hell, so would I.
“Come on. Let’s get you home. Boys check in when you get to the house. I’ll take Poppy home,” Garrity said.
We split up after one more sweep of the property. Our exterminating service would get paid pretty well for this. Corpse disposal was the job of the owner, plus it helped if they could see the work we’d done. Body count was important. Extra added bonus, the corpses served as a warning to other creepers who might stumble-shuffle-walk into the neighborhood. Garrity pulled me in with an arm to the neck. “Hanging in there?”
“It’s been a long year.”
“No girl should have to kill her dad,” he said softly.
We’d danced around our attraction since day one at the slushy bar. Now it was a steady back beat to every encounter we had. Problem was, as tongue-tied as Garrity made me, Cahill made me the same…just in a slightly different way. Lust is a funny, funny thing.
I figured it best to hang back and do nothing. Plus, we were too busy killing things to fuck. Right?
* * * *
“All’s clear,” Garrity said. We’d given the inside of my house a once over.
The good news with the infection was folks got sick first. High fever, lethargic, sores, coma even. It was pretty easy to spot them if you paid attention. And then if they did die and rise back up, you could take care of business. Problem was that apparently a lot of folks had no one paying attention to them, or they were living with people who couldn’t stomach the taking care of business part. Which I can totally understand, truth be told.
“Thanks for the help. I want a long, hot shower and then a long, deep sleep.”
“Sounds good. Got room for company?”
I opened my mouth but no sound came out. “I—”
“Do you really have to think about it?”
No! But then again, yes…
“Of course,” I joked. “I don’t go jumping into the shower with just any guy.”
“And I’m not just any guy,” he said, tracing the zipper of my black hoodie with his fingertip. Garrity is the kind of guy who takes up space—big, broad, imposing, huge—all of those adjectives worked for him. “I wasn’t just any guy when we were serving up Polar Berry slushies, and I’m not just any guy now.”
“True but—”
“But you lust after the meat whacker, too.” He grinned. Clever description of Cahill. Made him sound both perverse and silly. Honestly, Garrity won hands down. There were feelings there for him, real ones. Cahill was just a hot, hot friend that I wanted to fuck. But I’d never tell Garrity that. He’d probably run around yelling I won! I won!
I rolled my eyes. “I think you’re both…” I trailed off. We were whispering because my mother was apparently asleep already. Her bedroom door had been shut when we came home so I tried to keep my voice down. The whole effect was that of a teenager sneaking in after curfew ended.
“Nifty? Sweet? Groovy? Fun?” He laughed.
“Shut up.”
“Hey, Poppy Cooper, kiss me,” he said and tugged my hoodie hard enough to make me stutter-step forward.
“Garrity,” I sighed. “Christ.”
He shook his head. “Unh-unh. Something about watching you dispatch creepers gets my blood pumping.”
He pulled me in, and I considered raising my objections. But then his lips touched mine, and I sort of oozed against him in a highly embarrassing way and got lost in that kiss. I kissed him back after a moment. It was our first kiss. All the flirting and sexual tension made it so intense, I felt like I was vibrating. I felt that kiss in my entire body. Scalp to toe and all the naughty, willing places in between.
“Let me in, Poppy. Let me in your room. Let me in your bed,” he muttered, pulling that traitorous zipper south.
“Garrity, I can’t. My mom…she’s sleeping and…”
He laughed outright, and I heard something in the distance. We both stilled, listening. Could be a roaming creeper, if so, our neighborhood watch would notice and call it in. When the noise stopped, I managed to pull free from him.
“I’m tired.”
“And I’m beat,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to take you to bed and make you—”
“I need a shower!” I blurted. “Creeper brains.”
He cocked his head at me. “I’m not going to win this, am I?”
“No,” I sighed, grateful he saw it now.
“But I will win soon,” he said, leveling a finger at me before taking it and sliding it along my lower lip so that I felt the tug of arousal between my legs.
“I don’t doubt it.” It was the honest-to-God truth.
“Be safe. Lock up. I’ll come pick you up in the morning. Not sure what we’re working tomorrow. But someone somewhere is overrun with zombies. Infestation.”
“Wow, that’s so peppy.”
“Sad, but true, Poppy,” he said.
“Sleep well,” I said, guilt staining me on the inside. I wanted to try to explain to him just how much I actually wanted him. But I sucked at that stuff.
“You, too.” He started for the porch steps and hesitated. “Last chance to take advantage of me. Change your mind and lead me upstairs and ravage me like the easy man that I am.”
I snorted and covered my mouth. “Good night, Garrity.”
“Goodnight, Poppy Cooper.”
And he was gone. I watched his big, lumbering, ugly-ass green truck pull away and patted my pockets. I had my cell, I had my gun. I crept inside being as quiet as I could and locked the bathroom door behind me. I would take a long hot shower and then hit the sack.
It was just what the doctor ordered. You know, before reporting for duty tomorrow morning to dispatch a bunch of dead things.

Excerpt from NO GUILT (Zombie Exterminators book #2)
Buy Link: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/m8/323-201-107-489-2--no-guilt-zombie-exterminators-series-book-two-by-sommer-marsden.html

Also on Kindle, at ARe, Bookstrand etc.

Chapter One
“Don’t spook her,” Garrity said.
Noah was turning his big white van onto Topaz Lane, and I was trying really, really hard not to stare at Cahill. This was our first big job since moving from Maryland to Connecticut. Our first mission handed down and paid for by the county we lived in. Once we left our hometown after taking care of the Evoluminaries and their rabid leader William Tell (who had wanted to use me as a zombie baby mamma, thank you very much) we’d treated ourselves to a few weeks off.
Now the cupboard was bare, and we were itching to do something that did not involve loud music, alcohol and trading creeper war stories like old men at a veterans’ lunch.
“I won’t spook her. Why the hell would I spook her?” I snapped. Being fixated on Cahill’s offer wasn’t helping my mood. An offer of a threesome with him and Garrity—something that, yes, boys and girls, I have fantasized about more than once. It had come out of the blue after a drunken bucket-list conversation the four of us had had. Bam! In a moment of privacy, the offered was slammed down on the figurative table, and I couldn’t seem to stop poking at it. It was something I wanted, but it scared me.
I caught Cahill looking at me from the front seat where he rode shotgun to his lover Noah. I felt my face flush when I saw his cocky grin. Jeesh.
“Because you seem a bit on edge, Poppy,” Garrity said and leaned in. “Why are you so on edge, babe?”
It had taken forever and ever for me and Garrity to get together despite attraction and all that jazz. But my mother’s death and our last mission had sealed a bond that was a long time coming. So how would he feel about bringing handsome, tall Cahill in on the sex part of stuff? My brain wouldn’t let it go, but I swallowed hard and said “Don’t know. Maybe I’m rusty.”
“Nah. You’re good, girly. There’s nothing rusty about you,” he said and kissed me.
I turned my face fast—before I could analyze it—and kissed him on the lips. Part of me wanted to say those dreaded three words. I love you…part of me wanted to scream at even allowing myself to think it.
The van jumped and jittered on non-existent shocks and ripped me out of my reverie. “We’re here,” Noah said.
“Ready?” Cahill asked.
“No,” I said.
“Good.” Garrity patted my legs. “So let’s do this thing.”
We got out of the van and went to knock on Marylou Peterson’s front door.
I watched that instant—the instant that all couples seem to have—unfold. As Garrity was touching the small of my back, Cahill was touching Noah’s arm. That we-have-a-connection touch. Would Noah hate me forever if I took Cahill up on his offer? Would it ruin our friendship? Would it ruin the four of us and how we worked together? It was something I had to push out of my head as the front door swung inward. I had to focus on the complaints by the neighborhood and the county about a creeper that was loose that no one could seem to pinpoint. The last place it had been seen was Marylou’s house. I needed to focus on her.
“Hi, Marylou Peterson?” I spoke. The boys felt it better that I introduce us since I was relatively calm and a girl and there was a zombie apocalypse under way—or so the general population thought. “My name is Poppy Cooper, and we need to talk to you about a recent cree—” Garrity nudged me. Creeper was our own personal nickname for the undead. “Um…undead sighting on your property.”
“Who are you?”
“We’re county licensed freelance exterminators,” I said. Which was a fancy way of saying we kill dead things. We’re killers for hire.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice.
“May we come inside and speak with you?” Garrity asked, flipping a piece of nearly black hair out of his blue-blue eyes. He smiled. His boy next door shtick. Niiiiice.
“Sure. Come on,” she said and took a step back.
Funny. She seemed more scared of us than the idea of rogue zombies in her neck of the woods.
People were strange.
“It was on my property?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and frightened but off. Something wasn’t right, and I couldn’t figure out what. Maybe we’d interrupted her and her boyfriend or something.
I looked at the county’s paperwork. Connecticut was way more of a stickler for paperwork than Maryland had ever been. Go figure. “Two complaints of a lone male undead subject on your property,” I said. “But when someone is sent out to take care of the call, he’s gone. There is a note that the second complaint called was only partially sure it was a male subject. Have you seen anything?”
She shook her head. Her big brown eyes wide, her fingers twirling a piece of dyed-red hair so tight I feared the whole lock would pop right out of her scalp. “No. It’s just me and my brother here. I haven’t seen anything. My dad’s long gone—has been for years, my mom…” She shook her head and looked away.
Christ, I hated this part. I always felt like a heel. Like I was pouring salt in a wound, because I was. I had lost my mother to a creeper, I knew the pain of it. I also knew I’d been slightly luckier than most simply because my mother had been immune to the virus that was infecting all these undead. She didn’t rise. Most people had to deal with the loss and unwanted resurrection.
“I’m sorry,” I said. A few stupid words that could not possibly stem the flow of pain.
She nodded, cleared her throat. “My mother succumbed to the virus.”
“And your brother? Has he seen anything?”
“I’d have to ask him. Chuck’s not here right now, though,” she said, waving her hand around the kitchen. “But I’ll ask when I see him.”
“Can we look around your property? Maybe there’s something attracting this subject,” I said. When did I start talking like a zombie cop? I didn’t know.
“Sure,” she said and gave me another shrug. “You’re not going to find much. An overgrown yard, a shed, honeysuckle bushes and an old dog house. But go for it.”
“Thanks.” I nodded to her back kitchen door. “May we?”
Marylou stood and unlocked a series of locks on the door. Finally, she was able to pull it open. “I’ll be here when you’re done,” she said.
I eyed Garrity and his gaze flicked to the locks. Five of them by count and an old fashioned cheap battery operated alarm. It simply hung on the door knob, and if jostled it would sound an ear piercing alarm to let the occupants know someone had opened the door.
When we hit the wide planted, screened-in back porch, I whispered to him “Safety first.”
“Jesus, I’ll say.”
Cahill and Noah had already hit the property, walking the perimeter like two jungle hunters. I turned to face the house once I hit mid-yard. I stared up at the farmhouse windows that reminded me creepily of the eyes of the undead. They were there, they were open, but no one was home. The windows were uncovered, the sun bouncing off the upper panes of glass. I thought I saw something in the upper right, but then a crow flew overhead and it was gone. Probably a reflection.
The house to the right was for sale. The house to the left was buttoned up like a storm was coming. “We need to check next door,” I said to Garrity.
He grunted and checked out the shed. “Nothing but lawn stuff. Mower, hoes,” he laughed.
“Are you five?”
“Hoes,” he laughed again.
“Dipshit.”
“Snippy.”
“Childish.”
“Bitchy.”
“Hey, flirt later!” Cahill called, and when I looked up, surprised, he winked at me.
It went right to my pussy, that wink. I shook my head, ashamed of myself. We were on a job. I could worry about my sex life later.
“Anyway, just some gas and lawn care stuff. Normal shed crap,” Garrity said and put an arm around me as he passed to show we’d just been teasing.
I kissed him on the cheek, and he looked surprised. It was my penance for dirty thoughts about Cahill. Now how did I make amends with Noah? I had no idea.
Not that Noah was even paying attention. Or seemed to care. Maybe he didn’t know about…
“Hello?” Garrity rapped softly on my forehead with his knuckles.
“Sorry. Spacey. What did you say?”
“I said we need to talk to that brother. But first we’ll go next door.” He cocked his thumb at the battened-down house. “My guess is at least one of the complaint calls came from there.”
“I agree.”
“Well, someone call fucking Guinness. Or the church. Because that’s a miracle.” Noah brushed his surfer boy hair out of the way and holstered his gun. We were all armed to the teeth but trying to appear like we were just checking to see what was what.
It was nice to keep everything tucked away and hidden until we had an actual creeper spotting. On the other hand, we had to have it all so we weren’t caught off guard and didn’t become lunch for some dead things.
“Seriously,” Cahill said and put a possessive hand on Noah.
It made me hot all over to see those two touch, and it instantly brought to mind the times I’d accidentally seen them together. It was easy to imagine Noah sucking off Cahill. And it was never hard for me to call up the image of Cahill plunging into pretty Noah. Holding his slim hips and pushing his cock deep inside. But it had totally been accidental, me seeing them. Okay, the first time had been an accident. The other times had been luck.
“We’ll cut through the bushes to speak to the neighbor. When we come back here we can use the back door and talk to Marylou.”
“She’s edgy with a capital fidgety,” Noah said.
“I know. But imagine that you’re a young woman living with just your brother, and he’s not here. Maybe she’s alone a lot. Her mom died.” I felt a twinge in my gut when they all looked sad for me, and I shook my head. “Don’t do that. Don’t pity me,” I snapped, and they all fixed their faces into masks of indifference.
I cleared my throat, coughing away the ball of emotion that had lodged there. “And she doesn’t have dad to speak of. That’s gotta be hard. And then we show up—our ragtag team of killers…I gotta say, boys, I’d be a little edgy too, I think.”
Garrity sighed. “You have a point. Lucky you, you have us.” He smacked my ass hard, and I gaped at him.
“Come on,” Noah said to Cahill, and led the way. “Let’s go talk to the neighbor before they do something like fuck in the bushes.”
It was Cahill who turned and waggled his eyebrows at me. Jesus. This was getting sticky fast.

Please welcome Rochelle Weber

2011-06-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

Tag Line

Jake Johnsrud saved Annie Peterson’s life. Now slaves on that God-forsaken rock, the Moon, how will they survive?

Interview with Jake Johnsrud

Um, I’m Jake Johnsrud (pronounced John-shrewd) and I snuck in here with Annie. She’s showing me how to send burst messages.

Q: What's your story/back story? Why would someone come up with a story about YOU?

Jake: I suppose it’s because I’m a first-waver here at Moon Base Alpha. I’m not special in anyway. I’m not handsome—I have a lantern jaw and my ears are too big. I grew up in Castle Rock, Wisconsin. It’s a tiny village outside of Fennimore, nestled in the hills. We were in that part of Wisconsin where the Mississippi veers west, so we were about 35 miles north of Dubuque. But I worked in marketing in Chicago—until Freezeland ditched the Constitution. I HAD to go to the rally.

So, I get to DC and this beautiful girl is there with her husband and I’m thinking what a lucky guy he is, when suddenly she’s on the ground, holding his head in her lap and there’s a smoking hole in it from a laser gun. People are panicking and trying to run so I throw myself on top of her. We both get arrested and I figure I’ll never see her again. Now I’m on the Moon and she’s here. She still loves him, but maybe if I give her time… She wants to keep it on a just-friends level for now so that’s how it is.

Q: What are some of your good traits?
Jake: I’m a hard worker and I have a good sense of humor.

Q: What are some of your bad qualities?
Jake: Even though polyamory is allowed now, I could see that Paul and Annie were a mono couple, yet I fell in love with Annie the first time I laid eyes on her.

Q: One of the most important of the day: What's it like to kiss your heroine?
Jake: I’ve never kissed Annie or signed up for her conjugal cube or anything like that. She’s still grieving for Paul. But, I’m hoping the day’ll come…

Q: That’s all the questions we have for you tonight, Jake. Thank you for speaking to us.

Jake: Yeah. Glad to do it. And if you can find Annie’s baby and let her know he’s alive and okay, that’d help a lot. Oh—and don’t let Freezeland catch you. Annie’s right. You’ll be lucky to land here ‘cause he’s got an itchy trigger finger and a whole Army at his command.

Buy Links:
Create Space Buy Link: https://www.createspace.com/3559316
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43292
Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/rbriwamazon
Barnes & Noble Nook: http://tinyurl.com/RockBoundNook

Blurb

The future is a dangerous place for dreamers and idealists.
When a dictator takes over the United States, Annie Peterson attends a protest in Washington, DC, with her husband Paul. US troops fire into the crowd killing him, and Jake Johnsrud, a virtual stranger, risks his life to save hers. They are among the survivors who are sentenced to slavery on the Moon for their “crimes”—Jake as a miner; Annie as a sex slave.
Jake fights increasing feelings of anger and jealousy as Annie struggles to perform her job, while she resists her increasing attraction to him. Along with their fellow inmates, they fight to survive on the lunar "rock" that is their prison.

Excerpt
Moon Showers
August 2052
Moon Base Alpha
Lunar Coordinates: 19° North; 29° East

[During what we on Earth call the Persied Meteor shower, a rock has breached the living quarters, killing two men and forcing the base to move inside Mt. Aragaeus sooner than planned. While technically on the Moon the debris of the comet’s tail would be considered asteroids, from Annie’s point of view, they’re still meteors. And, OK, I made the same mistake.]

Fran Sparapani showed up at Annie’s desk the next day.
“How can I help you?” Annie asked.
“We still need to move the rest of the plants,” Fran said.
“Okay. I’ll get a work party together and they can take you over there.”
Annie began to worry when it got late. She wondered why the work party was taking so long. They were approaching the comet’s tail and the group was still in the dome.
Annie tried to call them and order them to come back. “Hydroponics, come in, please,” She waited several seconds and then tried again. “Hydroponics, come in please.” The Captain stood nervously at her side. After the third try, Annie shook her head. “They aren’t answering.” She sounded worried.
“They probably removed their helmets,” the Captain replied. “That comet’s almost back. Someone has to go over there and tell those people they need to get in here where it’s safe.”
“I’ll go,” Jake offered, walking into her office in full p-suit with his helmet under his arm. “I was just coming in here to ask about them.”
Annie followed him down the wide access tunnel to the main airlock. Just before he cycled through, he gave Annie a kiss. She smiled wanly as the door closed and the lock cycled, and watched him as he loped across the plain and cycled into the farm dome, determined to wait by the airlock until he brought the group safely back to the tunnel.
~*~
The rock that broke through the dome was not large as rocks go, but with no atmosphere to slow them down or burn them up, the meteors hit the Moon with the full force of their acceleration through space. The people in the dome did not have a chance. Annie watched in horror, as the plume of air and humidity vented from the foot-wide hole into the vacuum of space, not knowing whether Jake was okay. What if the meteor had exploded and shrapnel had pierced his p-suit?
“Not again!” she railed at God. “Every time I fall in love with a man you take him away from me!” She had said it out loud. Yes. She knew now that she was in love with Jake. And now it may well be too late.
Crystal came up beside her and put an arm around her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“A rock hit the dome,” Annie sobbed. “I saw the air whoosh out.”
“Who’s over there?” Crystal asked.
“Jake,” Annie replied. “And Fran and her work detail.”
The Captain came up behind her, as well.
“What happened?” he asked.
“A rock breached the farm,” Crystal replied, as Annie sobbed in her arms.
“He could be fine,” the Captain said. “I’m sure he kept his helmet on. Let’s go back to the office and try to raise him.”
They picked their way back to the make-shift office, and the Captain, himself, activated the communicator.
“Base to Johnsrud,” the Captain called. “Jake, come in!”
There was nothing but static.
“It could be his radio,” Captain Andrews told Annie. She sat numbly, nodding.
“How soon can we send someone out to check on them?” she asked.
“Not until we pass through the comet’s tail,” the Captain replied. “Then we’ll send out a party to bring them back.”
Annie left the office, and returned to the main airlock. She would stand there all night, if she had to. Jake had to come home safely. He just had to.
There was a moon quake. Annie didn’t see the rock that caused the new crater, but she saw the boulders exploding from it until one landed silently on their mountain, collapsing the entrance to their cave. Everyone felt that impact, too. Things might weigh less up here, but they had the same mass. Annie flinched and sobbed anew. They were trapped inside the cave. The airlock was deep enough inside that it was intact. But Jake was out there—beyond the rubble. And Annie didn’t know whether he was dead or alive.

Bio
136 Words 3rd Person

Rochelle Weber is a Navy veteran and holds a BA in Communications from Columbia College in Chicago with an emphasis on creative writing. Her non-fiction article, “Bulimia,” was featured in Hair Trigger 9 & 10, the acclaimed Columbia College student anthology. Her first novel, Rock Bound, is available now at Create Space, Amazon, Smashwords and BN.com. The sequel, Rock Crazy will be released by MuseItUp Publishing in October, 2011. She edits the Marketing for Romance Writers Newsletter. Rochelle lives in Volo, Ilinois, with her elder daughter and granddaughter. Her younger daughter lives in Paris, Illinois, and has a son and two daughters. Three cats, a dog and a rabbit allow the humans space in their home.

Website: www.rochelleweber.com
Blog: http://rochelleweber.blogspot.com
Blog: http://rochellesreviews.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/profile.php?id=1067356188
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/RochelleWeber

He's back -- Willsin Rowe

2011-05-26T01:45:00.000-07:00

Who's back? Why the naughty, the bawdy, the multi-talented Willsin Rowe. As you may recall, he is an author, cover artist, trailer creator, and musician — not necessarily in that order. ;)

How about a recap for our new readers, please tell us a bit about yourself, Willsin.

Hi, Cassie. Thanks for having me back. I might have to leave a toothbrush here, just in case!

The Willsin Rowe story? I fall in love with a scent, a playful expression or an act of casual intimacy more easily than with physical beauty. When confronted by any combination of those I am a lost cause.

I have done many things over and over. I have done even more things only once. I have half-done more things than I care to admit.

I don't yet know if I can ski, speak Italian or keep calm in a life-threatening situation, but I have my suspicions.

I play bass in a swampy blues band. I love to sing and don't let my voice get in the way.

I am intelligent but not sensible. I am polite but inappropriate. I am passionate but fearful. I am honest but reticent. I am neither stylish enough nor scruffy enough to be cool.

For this blog post, let’s talk about music. Not only do you create awesome movie trailers for lucky authors but you’re also a musician in a band. This has got to be juicy. I’m guessing that you were a musician first. Let’s hear all about the music man.

At the age of 16 I decided I’d like to play guitar instead of just wishing I could. I appropriated my dad’s unused guitar and used a book to teach myself how to play. Then classical guitar lessons, which I maintained for a little over a year, developing to a high enough standard to be accepted into a music course in a distant town. I was only 18, and it was an enormous slice of experience. Moving away from home and to a new town, absorbing all kinds of musical knowledge and practice, experimenting with different instruments and finding out I had a natural ability to get a reasonable sound out of almost anything. That was where I first played a bass guitar and it felt like a home-coming. And even more importantly, it was in that music course that I met my amazing wife.

What instrument(s) do you play?

My main instrument is bass guitar, but as I say, I started out on guitar and can still play to a reasonable level. I can also handle myself (heehee) on drums, and can manage keyboards, too…if it’s a really slow song.

Keyboard player here. Leader of the band?

No…I’m kinda the perpetual second-in-command. It wouldn’t matter if it was a two-piece, three-piece or twelve-piece band…I tend to end up as the vice-captain!

How many bands have you been in over the years? In a band now?

If we include all attempts at getting a band off the ground, the number would be somewhere around 20. If we restrict it to bands that actually played publicly, then it drops below 10. Then if we just make it the bands that actually got paid…then it’s 6. Including the current bands. I’m in three at the moment. The chief one is called The Medicine Show (where I go by the name “Burnin’ Log Dawkins”). I’m also a part-time multi-instrumentalist in a band called Thuggee Tennessee, and as chance would have it, my new next-door neighbour is a drummer who needed a bass player, so that’s the third band.

Play often? Where?

The Medicine Show is on a bit of a rest break at the moment, but we’ve played around our home town (Brisbane) quite a bit over the years. We also did a tiny 3-gig tour of Melbourne in 2008. We’ve played support to both Nashville Pussy and Wolfmother in our time, as well as a bunch of Roller Derby gigs. Mmm…derby chicks… Oh, and we recently signed a distribution and development contract which should see our songs on iTunes in the very near future. Yay!

Congrats!! Oh dear, I sound like a groupie, but inquiring minds want to know. Over here, we’ve had some strange names for bands. Ever been in a band with a weird name? What was it?

It’s not hugely weird, but I was a founder member of a band called Planet Cake back in 1994.

Well Planet Cake is different. Ever name a band?

Yep. Planet Cake! Everyone naturally said the name like you’d say “Planet Earth”, with the emphasis on the last word. Originally, though, I intended “Planet” to be an adjective, as in “Oh, I could really go for a nice piece of planet cake right now. Do we have any?”

Now I want cake. Ever write a song that was played for a show?

Oh…I’ve written plenty of songs over the years, but not a lot are fit for public consumption! I recorded a few of them back in 2002, and have shared them with select people who are far enough away that they can’t hit me. I wrote a single song for Planet Cake which only lasted for two gigs. It was the wrong kind of song for that band, but we were desperate to swell our playlist towards the mythical ten songs! The song was called “Dig Me Up”, and it was really quite…um…not so good…

Because I know my readers want to know this, I have to ask, did the girls throw panties at you on the stage?

Did I mention that I’m the bass player? That should answer that question!

We’ll get a tad more serious. Just a tad mind you. How did you get started making trailers?

It was a step-by-step process. I’d already made a few little music videos for The Medicine Show. I was also making covers for Excessica, my publisher, and the head honcho / publishing guru there, Selena Kitt, suggested I should freelance my services. Encouraged by that, I bought myself a brand new iMac and the Adobe Creative Suite. That iMac also had music and movie software, so I just started out by making a trailer for my friend Katie Salidas. That trailer, House of Immortal Pleasures, gained quite a bit of notice and again it was suggested to me that I could probably make a bit of a business out of it.

Since I’ve watched several of your trailers, which are excellent by the way, how long have you been creating trailers?

Aw, thank you ma’am. I made my first trailer back in 2009, but it was really quite simple and poor. I don’t believe it exists anywhere any more, thankfully. Through the urge to extend my ability, I’ve experimented further and further since then, incorporating animation and sound effects…and lately, even voice-overs.

Do you make trailers for authors or publishing houses or both? Can we ask you to create a trailer for us?

It’s always been at the author’s request, and yes, anyone can make a request. I’ve not dealt with publishing houses so far for trailers, but only because they’ve never asked!

Publishers pay attention!!! When you’re requested to make a trailer, does the author give you an idea of what she/he wants like email you a form? Or do you have to read the book or excerpt?

Well, unlike with covers, a trailer can obviously be made after the book is released. On the odd occasion I’m lucky enough to read the book before I make a trailer. Usually, though, I end up working from a similar brief as with a cover request. A blurb and excerpt, and brief character descriptions. The chief difference with a trailer is that you can’t afford to be too wordy. Even a half-page blurb is usually too long. That’s where my work in flash fiction helps me. You might not be able to tell from these answers, but brevity is one of my strengths.

Do you email the author what you’ve created up to a point, like half-way, to double check if that’s what the author/publisher had in mind?

That’s definitely an essential step, but one that I learned the hard way. Even the best description can fail to convey the look of a scene or an entire trailer, so it’s very important to let the author see what I’m doing. I strive to make my trailers a “point of difference” product. So letting the client see the “rushes” is very important, in case I’m pushing things too far for them! A three-second animation can have as many as a hundred frames in it, sometimes more. Each frame has to be made individually. So if I had, say, the hair colour wrong, I’d have to make every frame again! The same applies with the music. I send the authors my composition as a separate file so that they can listen without visual distraction. Only at the end do I combine the sound with the vision.

That's fascinating and what I've been wondering about. Anything that you know now that you wished you knew before you started?

Always get specifics. Ask plenty of questions before starting!

So true in so many areas of life. Floor is yours, Willsin the music man. Share with us a few trailers, links to find you online.

This is the trailer that started it all! And it’s a bonus that it’s for my buddy Katie.

House of Immortal Pleasures:

This was the first trailer in which I attempted a voice-over. I think my American accent needs a little work…

And the trailer for my pet story.

The Three-Day Hump:

Here’s a music video for my band, The Medicine Show. This was the first time I’d attempted animation, and I used some of the artwork I’d created for band posters, along with stock footage.

This Father’s Son:

PS: The crying boy is my younger son, aged 3. The way I’ve edited the video makes it look like he’s deadly scared of something…in truth, I was just trying to get him to take a nap and he was doing that whole “I’m not tired!” thing…heh…

And here’s our version of the famous “Bad To The Bone”. The live footage is from our gig supporting Wolfmother. A lot of the other footage comes from my wife’s family farm.

Bad To The Bone:

My music videos: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PL26E5282660DE0285

My book trailers: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PL5A85B5CAEA699FDD

My covers/trailers blogsite: http://willsinrowe.blogspot.com

My shared writing blogsite: http://coffeefuelederotica.com