Category: blogging

Great Summer Reads Day 4

Posted on by Cindy
 


Through a crazy twist of fate, Caroline Clemmons
was not born on a Texas ranch. To compensate for this illogical error, she
writes about handsome cowboys, feisty ranch women, and scheming villains in a
tiny office her family calls her pink cave. She and her Hero live in North
Central Texas cowboy country where they ride herd on their three rescued indoor
cats as well as providing nourishment outdoors for squirrels, birds, four feral
cats, a fox, a raccoon, and two possums. 


The books she creates in her pink cave have made her an Amazon bestselling
author and won several awards. She writes sweet to sensual romances about the
West, both historical and contemporary as well as time travel and mystery. Her
series include the Kincaids, McClintocks, Stone Mountain Texas, Bride Brigade,
Texas Time Travel, Texas Caprock Tales, Pearson Grove, and Loving A Rancher as
well as numerous single titles and contributions to multi-author sets. When
she’s not writing, she loves spending time with her family, reading her friends’
books, lunching with friends, browsing antique malls, checking Facebook, and
taking the occasional nap.

A destitute widow; a reformed con man;
the danger that links them…
 
Betsie Galloway Hirsch has escaped
Memphis with her son. Her gambling husband tricked the wrong people and they’re
demanding Betsie pay his debts—or else. She’s come to Kincaid Springs to stay
with her mother and seek a safe place for her son. Being so far from her former
home, she feels secure. That is, until danger confronts her.
 
After 34 years alone, Michael “Monk”
Magonagle is falling in love with Betsie and is fond of her son. Monk is
certain she is not free of the men her late husband cheated. Although he is not
a violent man by nature, Monk is willing to fight for Betsie’s safety. He and
the men of the Kincaid family prepare to meet the enemy.
How can Betsie and Liam be protected
from the approaching danger? Will she and Monk be able to forge a love that
endures or will one of them be silenced forever? What toll will the enemy exact? 
 

  
~ Universal Amazon Link ~ 
   
Snippet:
Monk hoped he wasn’t about to make
a fool of himself. He took her hand. “Betsie, I know you’re recently widowed
and I don’t want to rush you. When you’re ready to receive callers, may I call
on you?”
“Well, of course. Mam’s said she’s
told you you’re always welcome here…” He saw when his meaning dawn on her. She
gaped and laid a hand at her throat. “Wait… you mean on me personally?”
He nodded, suddenly overcome by
shyness.
A wide smile graced her face. “Oh,
Monk, I’d like that.” She raised her chin. “I-I’m not mourning my late husband
for several reasons. You may call whenever you wish.”
He released his breath. “Thank
you. I’ll be by this evening after supper.” He realized he still held her hand
and relinquished it.
She laid her fingers on his arm.
“Why not come for supper? You have to eat sometime.”
“You’ve convinced me. I’ll see you
later this afternoon. Goodbye.” He grabbed his hat and left before he did or
said something goofy.

 

At least she hadn’t made fun of
him for asking. She’d appeared pleased but she didn’t know many people in town
yet. Would she change her mind after meeting other eligible men?

 

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page 

 

 

SYNC Summer Audiobook 2019 week 7

SYNC Summer Audiobook 2019 week 7

Posted on by Cindy

I just wanted to take a quick moment to remind you about SYNC is a free summer audiobook program for young adults but you can do this to.  From April 25th to August 1st, SYNC gives away two complete audiobook downloads a week –pairs of high interest titles, based on weekly themes. Sign up for email or text alerts and be first to know when new titles are available to download at www.audiobooksync.com.

I have always wanted to give audio books another chance and what better way then through SYNC Audio Books. These are actually both books I have never read so I am excited to give them a try.

Here is the books available this week: 06/06 – 06/13

In this young adult debut set in Saudi Arabia, where the law forbids romantic relationships outside of marriage, two teens fall in love, with tragic consequences. Sixteen-year-old Zarin Wadia is many things: an Indian girl, a bright and vivacious student, an orphan, a troublemaker whose romantic entanglements are the subject of endless gossip among the girls in her school. “You don’t want to get involved with a girl like that,” they say. So how is it that Porus, a Parsi boy, has only ever had eyes for her? And how did Zarin and Porus end up dead in a car together, crashed on the side of the highway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia? When the religious police arrive, everything everyone thought they knew about Zarin is called into question.

When a small town relies on tourists flocking to its baths, will a report of dangerously polluted waters be enough to shut them down? Henrik Ibsen weighs the cost of public health versus a town’s livelihood in An Enemy of the People. Adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. An L.A. Theatre Works full cast recording featuring: Rosalind Ayres as Catherine Stockman Gregory Harrison as Peter Stockman Richard Kind as Dr. Thomas Stockman Alan Mandell as Morten Kill Alan Shearman as Captain Horster Jon Matthews as Billing Josh Stamberg as Hovstad Emily Swallow as Petra Tom Virtue as Aslaksen Additional voices by Sam Boeck, William Hickman, Adam Mondschein, Julia Coulter, and Jeff Gardner. Includes an interview about the Deepwater Horizon, man-made environmental disasters, climate change, and the state of the world’s water supply with Joel K. Bourne Jr., former senior environment writer for National Geographic. Directed by Martin Jarvis. Recorded in Los Angeles before a live audience at The James Bridges Theater, UCLA in April of 2014. An Enemy of the People is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series featuring science-themed plays. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, bridging science and the arts in the modern world.

Great Summer Reads Day 3

Posted on by Cindy

 

My name is Robyn Echols. Zina Abbott is the pen I use for my historical novels. I’m a member of Women Writing the West and Western Writers of America. I currently live with my husband in California’s central valley near the “Gateway to Yosemite.”I love to read, quilt, work with digital images on my photo editing program, and work on my own family history.

I am a blogger. In addition to my own blog, I blog for several group blogs including the Sweet Americana Sweethearts blog, which I started and administer.

 

Will Virginia’s chosen vocation
fill the empty spaces in her heart?
It is 1858. With both parents dead,
Virginia Atwell lives with her older brother, Jefferson, and his family in
Booneville, Missouri. Under the pseudonym, V. A. Wellington, she secretly has
been submitting articles to a well-respected investigative journal about
controversial topics. To her dismay, she learns her family plans to buy new
farmland in the wilds of central Kansas Territory, making it almost impossible
for her to continue her clandestine article submissions. More importantly,
Virginia is terrified of the prospect of living so close to hostile Indian
tribes and dying by their hands because they resent white Americans moving onto
their traditional buffalo hunting grounds.
Virginia persuades her brothers to
give her a share of their parents’ inheritance so she may attend one of the few
colleges in Ohio that accepts female students. There, she finds Avery Wilson,
one of her professors and fellow boarder at Bettina Calloway’s boarding house,
resentful of female students, conceited and annoying, especially after his
criticism and resentment directed towards the author, V. A. Wellington, whose
articles are published while his submissions are rejected.
Virginia’s publisher insists V. A.
Wellington meet with him in person in St. Louis to discuss a new assignment.
When her landlady insists she cannot travel alone, Avery, curious about
Virginia’s secretive meeting and unable to resist his growing attraction to the
irritating but brilliant student, offers to escort her.
Once the editor discovers his star
contributor is a woman, he refuses to send her to write about conditions on the
Kaw reservation and the proposed treaty the government intends to impose on the
natives. Hoping to favorably impress the editor, Avery offers to pose as
Virginia’s fiancé in order to accompany and protect her on her assignment. Her
heart goes out to the Kaw, but what can fill the empty spaces of her heart?

Virginia’s
Vocation is also part of the author’s Atwell Kin series

 

Snippet:
His
gray eyes that studied her conveyed no warmth. With a sinking feeling, Virginia
forced a slight upturn of her lips and nodded a greeting. Until they were
formally introduced, it would be impolite for her to initiate a conversation.
However, he did not need to speak for her to know he did not welcome her
presence.
 

 

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page 

 

 

Great Summer Reads Day 2

Posted on by Cindy
I am a children’s author, but up until a few years ago, I was a journalist and editor. Something rather unexpected sparked my new career as an author—a family trip to Egypt with my mother and two young nephews. We had a great time and I thought I’d write them a short story as a different kind of souvenir…. Well, one book and a planned book series later, I had changed careers. I have now published Book 3 (The Temple of the Crystal Timekeeper) in my MG adventure series Chronicles of the Stone, with many awards for the first book, The Secret of the Sacred Scarab, and a few for Book 2, The Search for the Stone of Excalibur, and one already for Book 3! I also teach online novel writing for aspiring authors and I find that very satisfying. Relaxation time finds me enjoying something creative or artistic, music, books, theatre or ballet. I love doing research for my book series. I love animals and have written two animal rescue stories. I have two adorable (naughty) little dogs called Chloe and Pumpkin, and a beautiful black cat called Bertie.

 A
5000-year-old mystery comes to life when a scruffy peddler gives Adam and
Justin Sinclair an old Egyptian scarab on their very first day in Egypt. Only
when the evil Dr. Faisal Khalid shows a particular interest in the cousins and
their scarab, do the boys realise they are in terrible danger. 


Justin and Adam
embark upon the adventure of a lifetime, taking them down the Nile and across
the harsh desert in their search for the legendary tomb of the Scarab King, an
ancient Egyptian ruler. They are plunged into a whirlpool of hazardous and
mysterious events when Dr. Khalid kidnaps them.  With
just their wits, courage, and each other, the boys manage to survive … only to
find that the end of one journey is the beginning of another! 

 This is a must-read for Middle Graders keen on action, adventure, and
Arthurian stories! 
 
Cousins Adam and Justin Sinclair are
hot on the trail of the second Stone of Power, one of seven ancient stones lost
centuries ago. This stone might be embedded in the hilt of a newly discovered
sword that archeologists believe belonged to King Arthur: Excalibur. 
 
However,
their long-standing enemy, Dr. Khalid, is following them as they travel to
Scotland to investigate an old castle. Little do they know there is another
deadly force, the Eaters of Poison, who have their own mission to complete.
Time is running out as the confluence of the planets draws closer. Can Justin
and Adam find the second Stone of Power and survive? 

A plane
crash! Lost in the Mexican jungle! Will Adam, Justin, and Kim survive long
enough to find the Third Stone of Power?
With
only a young boy, Tukum, as their guide, the kids make their way through the
dense and dangerous jungle to find the lost city of stone gods, where the Stone
of Power might be located. River rafting on a crocodile-infested river and
evading predators are just part of this hazardous task.
 
Of
course, their old adversary Dr. Khalid is close behind as the kids press on.
But he is not the worst of their problems. This time Adam will clash with a terrible
enemy who adopts the persona of an evil Aztec god, Tezcatlipoca, and is keen to
revive the ancient tradition of human sacrifice.  Will they emerge
alive from the jungle? Will Dr. Khalid find the third Stone of Power before
they do?
   
 
 
Snippet From Book 2:
He heard a faint howling
noise in the distance. Wolves? Adam froze with fear. He desperately tried to
remember whether there had still been wolves in England during the Dark Ages.
There must have been because there was no other sound quite like the howl of a
wolf. The hairs on his arms rose as he heard the howl again. Although he
pinched himself to wake up, it was no good; he remained in the dream. At the
sound of distant hoof beats, he almost ducked behind a large tree trunk. There
was no time to hide because suddenly the drumming hooves were all around him.
Then came the faint melancholy wail of a battle horn, and the tinny sound of
chinking metal. He could hear the crisp snap-snap
of fluttering pennants, and when he turned, he glimpsed banners waving among
the trees. The surge of spectral riders halted and one man, seated on a white
horse, appeared at the head of the cavalcade.

 

The eerie figure came
closer, the horse lifting its feet carefully, clip-clopping right up to the
trembling boy. The horse was huge, its trappings gleaming with pinpoints of
metal rosettes, its long tail and mane hanging like ghostly cobwebs in the pale
moonlight. The beast snorted and stamped restlessly. Adam saw the burnished
glint of a helmet with a dragon-shaped crest topped by a red plume. Although
the cheek pieces of the helmet obscured the man’s features, the shadowy figure
was looking right at him. A red cloak swirled around the warrior’s body and, as
the fabric swung aside, Adam saw the gleam of chain mail and the dark shape of
a breastplate on the man’s chest. The warrior’s armor seemed more Roman than he
expected. A banner flapped from the spear of a man behind the warrior: a red
dragon on a white background. The warrior raised one arm, and a roar erupted as
the sounds of cheering burst from what seemed to be thousands of throats.
Although Adam heard strange words in another language, somehow, he understood
what the voices said.
 

 

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page 

 

 

Great Summer Reads Day 1 Mrs Murry's Hidden Treasure

Great Summer Reads Day 1 Mrs Murry’s Hidden Treasure

Posted on by Cindy
An avid gardener, artist, musician and writer, Emily-Jane Hills Orford has fond memories and lots of stories that evolved from a childhood growing up in a haunted Victorian mansion. Told she had a ‘vivid imagination’, the author used this talent to create stories in her head to pass tedious hours while sick, waiting in a doctor’s office, listening to a teacher drone on about something she already knew, or enduring the long, stuffy family car rides. The author lived her stories in her head, allowing her imagination to lead her into a different world, one of her own making. 

 As the author grew up, these stories, imaginings and fantasies took to the written form and, over the years, she developed a reputation for telling a good story. Emily-Jane can now boast that she is an award-winning author of several books, including Mrs. Murray’s Ghost (Telltale Publishing 2018), Queen Mary’s Daughter (Clean Reads 2018), Gerlinda (CFA 2016) which received an Honorable Mention in the 2016 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards, To Be a Duke (CFA 2014) which was named Finalist and Silver Medalist in the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and received an Honorable Mention in the 2015 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards and several other books. A retired teacher of music and creative writing, she writes about the extra-ordinary in life and the fantasies of dreams combined with memories. 

~ Facebook ~ Goodreads ~ 
~ Website ~ Twitter ~ Blog ~
There is a hidden treasure in the
grand old mansion on Piccadilly Street, in a place called London, but not the
real London of English fame. There’s also a lot of mystery and a murder that’s
been unsolved for decades. But it’s the treasure that captures Mary’s interest.
 
Mary lives in this house along with her family, her Brownie friends and a
ghost. When the ghost reveals her secret about the hidden treasure, there’s no
stopping Mary, her Brownie friends, or her enemies to searching for this
treasure. 
 
Why the intrigue? Apparently there’s a little bit of magic connected
with this treasure. And so the adventure begins. 
 
Who will find the treasure
first?
 
 
 

 


  
~ Universal Amazon Link ~ 
  
Snippet:
But this treasure
alluded her. She knew it was here, in this house, somewhere. The question was,
where? And Mrs. Murray wasn’t being any help. Not one bit.
Mary let out a
deeply pent up sigh. “You must remember something! When was the last time you
held the jewellery in your hands? Did you ever wear the ring? Or the necklace?
Or both?”
“Oh yes!” Mrs.
Murray beamed, if a ghost could beam through its shimmering effervescence. Even
her eyes glistened, sparkled really, as the memories started to wash over her.
“I wore it as a teenager. Only briefly. My grandmother gave it to me when I
turned sixteen. She said it was very special, full of magic. I didn’t believe
her then. I didn’t believe in magic. You see, I hadn’t met Brunny and Pelly
yet. They were connected to my grandmother until she died, which was only days
after she gave me the jewels. Very sad. She was so strong and healthy. It was
as if some horrible curse took her away. That’s what Brunny said when he first
appeared to me. Both my grandmother and Brunny insisted I take special care of
the jewels. And certainly not wear them around for the world to see. Such a
shame, really. They are beautiful. Were beautiful. Are beautiful. I don’t know
which, past or present. Do they even still exist? I don’t remember the last
time I saw the necklace. It must have been before I left Scotland. Perhaps it
is still there. Perhaps I misplaced it. I don’t really know. But the ring is
here. Somewhere. If it still exists.”
“Oh, it exists
all right.” Mary dropped her legs over the side of the bed. “Maybe if we wander
the house together, you might remember and I might sense something.”
“What if we wake
your family?”
“I’ll pretend I’m
sleepwalking,” Mary chuckled softly. “I do that enough anyway. They’ll believe
it. Besides. Everyone’s exhausted. They’re out for the night. Like Dad will say
in the morning, sleeping like a log.”
“If you insist.”
“I do.”
“Where are the
Brownies? I hope Elizabeth hasn’t poisoned them again.”

 

“In which case, we shall be extra vigilant as she may be watching
our every move.” Mary didn’t say it out loud, but she had decided it might be
best to just sense a location of the treasure and then go looking for it in
daylight, at a time when she was sure Elizabeth wasn’t snooping.

 

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page 

 

 

SYNC Summer Audiobook 2019 week 6

SYNC Summer Audiobook 2019 week 6

Posted on by Cindy

I just wanted to take a quick moment to remind you about SYNC is a free summer audiobook program for young adults but you can do this to.  From April 25th to August 1st, SYNC gives away two complete audiobook downloads a week –pairs of high interest titles, based on weekly themes. Sign up for email or text alerts and be first to know when new titles are available to download at www.audiobooksync.com.

I have always wanted to give audio books another chance and what better way then through SYNC Audio Books. These are actually both books I have never read so I am excited to give them a try.

Here is the books available this week: 05/30 – 06/06

Jorjeana Marie masterfully narrates this story of mothers, daughters, and fractured relationships. After spending nearly three years in a mental institution against her will, Cassie O’Malley is not sure how to move forward with her life. Marie’s narration pulls the listener into Cassie’s frame of mind as she attempts to re-enter the world. Cassie spirals between self-reflection and defiance while confronting her unreliable memories and struggling to cope with her charming but toxic mother. Marie’s deliberately flat and distant tone throughout most of the audiobook perfectly suit Cassie’s internal thought process. This makes the moments when Cassie’s rage breaks through all the more heartbreaking and realistic.

Narrator Alex McKenna depicts the transformation of Wren Clemens, a 14-year-old teen who is sent to wilderness therapy camp. McKenna, nimbly navigating this complex protagonist, highlights Wren’s faults and strengths with tones of misery, regret, resilience, and grace. Wren comes to life as McKenna vocalizes the teenage girl’s search for the self she has left behind. With a cadence that follows the ever-changing pulse of Wren’s spirit, McKenna notes her subtlest shifts in mood in a captivating manner. Though McKenna begins the book in a scratchy voice to call attention to Wren’s pain and confusion, the end of the story finds listeners falling in love with the heroine as McKenna’s last words reveal Wren as a girl who has finally found her true self.