New Release — Deadly as the Driven Snow (A Calendar Clan Mystery Book 2) by Agnes Alexander

When a mortally wounded man turns up on the back porch of newlyweds June and Jason Striker, they know the honeymoon is definitely over. As Sheriff of Edison County, Jason can’t let a killer snowstorm stop him from trying to find the perpetrator of this crime—and June, a novice private investigator, is determined to help.

But the mystery deepens when other murdered victims are tossed out around the small North Carolina town, and a man tries to break in to the Striker household. What do these dead men have in common—or is some kind of message being sent? 

It all becomes dangerously personal when June and Jason’s home is attacked, and they must go into hiding to survive. Can they beat the clock to discover the killer’s motive before he strikes again? Or will their marriage end quickly, as DEADLY AS THE DRIVEN SNOW…

EXCERPT

     I turned from the window and let my mind come back to the present on this icy February day. I also let out a sigh of relief because the subject of Honduras had been dropped, at least for the time being. I busied myself putting the dirty breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. As I bent over to fill the slot on the door with liquid soap, Dingo came sauntering into the room. He stretched and twisted around my leg. I closed the dishwasher, then reached down and rubbed his long gray hair. He purred, and I knew he was asking for something to eat. The shower turned off, so I started the dishwasher and turned to the cat.

     “Come on, boy,” I said and headed for the laundry room which is connected to the mud room where our back door is located. Though we mostly come into the house from the side which leads into the garage, when Jason has muddy boots he comes in the back door, so he can deposit them there. This door leads to a glassed-in porch with another door and four steps down to the yard. I crossed this small room to get to the laundry room where I keep food for Dingo and Buzzy, Jason’s cat. After our marriage, we tried for a few weeks to make Buzzy an indoor cat, but he would have nothing to do with it. Jason ended up building him a fleece-lined house and we put a cat door in the garage, so he could come and go as he pleased. I’ve noticed that he’s staying in the garage more and more since the weather has turned cold.

     Dingo jumped in front of me and slid his body through his cat door into the laundry room. I had to wait until he wiggled his fat behind through the opening before I could open the big door and go inside. “I’ll get you fed then I’ll go feed Buzz,” I said. Though I know he ignores me, I talk to him anyway.

     Just as I took the can of food from the cabinet beside the washer, I heard a loud knock on the door leading outside. I left the laundry room door open and went to glance out the glass panels on the top half of the outside door. The blinds were closed, and I couldn’t see anything. I set the cat food down and moved to open the blinds, wondering who could be at our door so early on such a bad day.

I screamed and jumped back in horror as I looked at a man’s bloody face plastered against the glass. I think the man was trying to tell me something, but I wasn’t about to open the door.

      

30 writing quotes from well-known authors by Kaye Spencer #writingquotes #quotes #PrairieRosePubs

I love witty quotes and clever sayings, so in that regard, here are my favorite quotes about writing.

Mark Twain - Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Ray Bradbury - You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Gene Fowler - Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead. 

Robert A. Heinlein - Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Rosemary Mahoney - Writing is not a genteel profession; it's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.

Richard North Patterson - Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with a first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing.

Mark Twain - Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain - The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus - Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.

Frank Yerby - It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen. A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude to cut out even the most brilliant passage so long as it doesn't advance the story.

Charlotte Bronte - I'm just going to write because I cannot help it.

Clarence Budington Kelland - I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

via GIPHY

Leo Rosten - Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

Robert Benchley - It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Stephen Wright - I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

Mickey Spillane - The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

E. L. Doctorow - Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Harlan Ellison - Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Eugene Ionesco - A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.

Stephen Leigh - You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won't be able to take a break from being a writer...

Niyi Osundare - One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating.

Rainer Maria Rilke - What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude. Going into yourself and meeting no one for hours on end - that is what you must be able to attain.

Ernest Hemingway - The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

Oscar Wilde - There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

William Carlos Williams - I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.

George Orwell - Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Franz Kafka - A non-writing writer is a writer courting insanity.

W. Somerset Maugham - There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Dorothy Parker - If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of 'The Elements of Style'. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

And the best writing quote of all...

Lev Grossman - Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.

;-)

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Kaye Spencer
Writing through history one romance upon a time

Images:
Courtesy OpenClipArt.com and Morguefile.com
The Scream: Edvard Munch creator QS:P170,Q41406, Edvard Munch, 1893, The Scream, oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 91 x 73 cm, National Gallery of Norway, marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons

BACKLOG, by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer

 If you don’t count a brief obsession when I was in fourth grade or the scifi novel I started when I was a hippie, my writing career began in 1994 when my husband went to work in Japan, leaving me alone in Portland, Oregon.

We were having new carpeting installed in the bedroom, so the bed had been moved into his office, directly across from his computer. Not used to being on my own, I often couldn’t sleep and would stare at that blank, black monitor screen. I loved reading mysteries and had a few thoughts of writing one; now here was my chance!

            I considered for several nights more, then during one post-midnight awake session, I got up and began. I didn’t know anything about computers, having only used one on rare occasions, but I found a writing program (WordPerfect 0.00001 or some such), inserted a floppy disk so I wouldn’t use up space on the hard drive, and began to type.

            Then, as now, I came up with the title first: The Oldest House. It was a story of a thirty-something antiques and collectible dealer who finds a framed print with a picture of an old house hidden behind it. Off she goes on adventures; there is a murder; she meets a man who is either the murderer or the prince of her dreams; she gets herself into danger and is almost killed… It was a basic plot, but I loved it and I loved writing it. Before I knew it, I had a full forty-five pages! There was no turning back.

            The page count grew into 450, and I began the process of querying agents and publishers. I got one personal response that I took to heart: the murder should happen in the first ten pages. I rewrote the beginning, sent it back, and received a rejection slip, but I didn’t care. By that time I had started my second book.

            The second mystery, Broken Roses,  was a tough one with a complex plot that spanned several decades. I found myself incorporating details from my own life, including the basis for the book, a letter by a young jilted girl that we found in the walls of our house. In my story, the woman goes a little crazy. There is a rape scene, which I wrote with tears streaming down my face as I recalled my own abuse. It was cathartic though, and I didn’t regret the scene.

            This book was not picked up by publishers or agents either.

            Next, I tried something lighter, first of a would-be series called Catts and the Seven of Swords. L.E. (Elly) Catts is a West Coast photographer, who along with her assistant Ryan and his cat Medusa, finds the usual, and some unusual, trouble concerning the witches, the Tarot, and a body on a slab. This was the first time I’d incorporated the cat.

            Again, no one wanted the book, and I bought an accordion folder to house my mounting collection of rejection slips. I knew I wasn’t working hard enough on the interminable chore of query letters and synopses, but I only had so much time, and I’d rather spend it writing stories.

I moved on to something completely different, the series that turned out to be what I consider my masterpiece. The idea for the Cat Seasons tetralogy began with my old cat Dirty Harry sleeping under a hosta plant in the heat of summer. Twitching in his sleep, dreaming his cat dreams, the scifi-fantasy Cat Summer was born, followed by Cat Winter, Cat Autumn, and Cat Spring. The idea was basic— cats saving the world— but the premise was fascinating, and soon I’d woven a rich tapestry of time travel, alternate universes, and a devil without a soul. Now, many edits later, I’m proud to announce the first of the tetralogy, Cat Summer, will be published sometime this year by Fire Star!

            I still think of that backlog of first books, The Oldest House, Broken Roses,  and the L.E. Catts series. Sometimes they call to me, and every once in a while, I listen.

Check out more blogs by Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer at:

Mollie Hunt: Crazy Cat Lady Mysteries and more

Happy reading!

Book Review: The Blue of Antyllus by Michael E. Gonzales

Blurb:

The alien world of Antyllus is moving forward under new rule now that the war has been fought and won. With the native E’meset tribe joining with the emerging rebel Earth forces against Wilmington, the nefarious commander of the corrupt IIEA army of mercenaries, a tenuous peace has been patched together—but the solution for that peace is not workable for some, and whispers of a deadly uprising are in the wind...

Captain Nash Rastaban tries to rebuild his life after being duped into fighting with Wilmington’s iniquitous forces. He is recruited by Dave Mitchell to help quell the mercenaries who plan to take over Antyllus—a battle he wants no part of. But when he stands to lose all he holds dear, he realizes that peace is something he is going to have to fight for—this time, on the right side.

Will Antyllus ever be settled? Can the E’meset trust the humans and SUBs to fight alongside them against those corrupt officials who would take over Antyllus for their own gain? Power is a formidable motivator, but Antyllus—and all it stands for—is worth this fight…worth dying for. Nash and the ragtag band of soldiers he leads are determined to protect their homes, their loves, and their lives—even if it means making a last, defiant stand here in THE BLUE OF ANTYLLUS…

My review:

Travel back to the future at Antyllus, the new world colony that after dealing with the evil discovered in Vampires of Antyllus book 4, is still rocking and reeling and settling into a new life. We meet Tanny, Nash, Joe, and Nista and experience with them the trials and triumphs of settling a new land and dealing with old hurts and mindsets along with new hope and acceptances. But there still are some around who have evil in their hearts and aren’t as willing to conform to their supposed fates. Danger and prejudices are faced as the final nefarious remnants are exposed and deal with both on a large scale and on more personal levels. Life happens and both tears of joy and sorrow are felt as the people of Antyllus claim their destiny. This is an awesome conclusion to The Unborn Galaxy series.

Love how the last part is like an extended epilogue, bringing back past favorite characters and tying up the series with fireworks.  You definitely don't want to miss out on this story!

Purchase links:

     

New Release -- The Blue of Antyllus (The Unborn Galaxy Book 5) by Michael E. Gonzales

The alien world of Antyllus is moving forward under new rule now that the war has been fought and won. With the native E’meset tribe joining with the emerging rebel Earth forces against Wilmington, the nefarious commander of the corrupt IIEA army of mercenaries, a tenuous peace has been patched together—but the solution for that peace is not workable for some, and whispers of a deadly uprising are in the wind...

Captain Nash Rastaban tries to rebuild his life after being duped into fighting with Wilmington’s iniquitous forces. He is recruited by Dave Mitchell to help quell the mercenaries who plan to take over Antyllus—a battle he wants no part of. But when he stands to lose all he holds dear, he realizes that peace is something he is going to have to fight for—this time, on the right side.

Will Antyllus ever be settled? Can the E’meset trust the humans and SUBs to fight alongside them against those corrupt officials who would take over Antyllus for their own gain? Power is a formidable motivator, but Antyllus—and all it stands for—is worth this fight…worth dying for. Nash and the ragtag band of soldiers he leads are determined to protect their homes, their loves, and their lives—even if it means making a last, defiant stand here in THE BLUE OF ANTYLLUS…

EXCERPT:

     Not long after the celebration had started, a call went out to all personnel with any form of medical training to report to any one of the medical facilities within New Roanoke.

     After eating, Tanny donned her mask and wandered about through the throngs, she eventually found herself at the eastern gate, a huge set of concrete doors surmounted with a wall of reinforced razor wire. Beyond that was what the humans called “The Wild Blue Yonder,” or just “The Blue,” ― the vast, untamed and deadly forest covering the planet. The trees grew taller than on Earth in the lower gravity. The forest’s colors were various shades of cyan, blues, purples, and even black. Here and there were other colors such as orange, red, and green, but all dark shades. This was a result of the pale light from the planet’s red dwarf star.

     The low light required vegetation on Antyllus to possess more photosynthetic pigments to capture radiation in a wider range of wavelengths. These plants reflected little of the light that struck them; thus, they had adapted these colors as best for photosynthesis.

     Just outside the east gate and beyond the three-hundred-meter kill zone, the cyan wall of this alien forest stood witness over the site of the heaviest fighting. Bodies littered the ground. The bloody scene told the tale of the great violence that had washed over the area. The sight of the carnage horrified Tanny.

     

Never Trust a Memory! by J. Arlene Culiner

Never Trust a Memory

  Once upon a time (many years ago), I briefly found myself in a clapboard, rusty trailer, semi-ghost town in Nevada. The hotel I stayed in was a rundown has-been, where ceilings soared high, and the lumpy, almost colorless wallpaper was surely a century old. Outside, an ever-buffeting wind dragged dust across the frozen ground, rattled low-lying grasses, set the wooden doors of abandoned shacks tapping. The only warmth to be found was in the hotel’s shabby bar room where, under an ancient tin ceiling, a talentless band whined out bad country music, and eccentric locals dished up tall tales, wry humor, and suspicion. It was a singular place, that community, eerie, even magical, and I’d give anything to be able to go back to it…

But where was it?

Believe me, I’ve searched for it over and over, traveling back and forth across Nevada, peeking into shabby trailer communities, fading towns, boom towns, ghost towns, and I’ve never found it. What was it called? Was it the way I remember it? Perhaps my recollection has so distorted the place, I would never recognize it today. Even more troubling, has memory played me a trick, created a place that never existed?

Aha. So the culprit is memory.

Certainly, we’ve all had the experience of meeting up with someone we haven’t seen in years, and discovering that a shared experience has been remembered in quite a different way. In fact, a memory is rather like a color photo taken at a special moment in life; pull out that photo years later, and look how those once-bright colors have faded with time.

We like to think we’ve kept a memory accurately, that it stays the same no matter how many times we go over it. But the sad fact is, it’s impossible to remember something without changing it each time we turn it over in our mind or bring it up in conversation. We always alter it in some slight, even imperceptible, way, add a detail, a scent, a sound, an atmosphere, an intensity that never existed. And, constantly updating the memory in this unconscious way, the newer version replaces the older. Which means it ceases to be a memory and becomes an anecdote.

So how can we recover the true, original memory? We can’t. Sure, sometimes returning to a place can trigger a certain amount of recall, but not all of it. To reconstruct a memory — even if that reconstruction is imperfect and will always remain so — we depend on available information stored in our brain, on the coordinated activity between the hippocampus and the frontal cortex. The hippocampus is the brain’s director, and it tells the cortex which particular neurons it should activate. Frequently activated neurons become part of a permanent memory in the cortex; rarely activated neurons are lost. And that means that some — or all — of the real information we’re looking for, has probably vanished, along with the telephone number of a long-lost lover, an old password, the first and last names of people who once meant something, faces, birthdays, and once-important, deeply intense conversations.

Of course, as a writer, I do embrace a certain amount of memory loss. Perhaps if I remembered that nameless semi-ghost town as it really was, it wouldn’t seem so romantic now. It might well be an ugly place, a hostile community of dullards, one that, after a lifetime of rich experiences, would seem banal, without charm, without mystery. But because my memory has played me tricks, I’ve been able to turn it into a delightful fictional community — Blake’s Folly, the setting for my romance, Desert Rose.

Here’s how my heroine, Rose Badger, sees Blake’s Folly:

Even if Blake’s Folly was a wash-out now, it had been jumpy and nervous enough back in the old Gold Rush days. Today’s residents were the descendants of the wild gun-slingers and goodtime girls, those who’d hung around too long, gotten so caught in the gluey languor of this place, they’d been unable to move off.

Today, this place was a rusty trailer, scrapyard, abandoned car, clapboard shack, sagging old house community: a dead end if there ever was one. This was nowhere. This was the end of the line, socially speaking. This was a has-been. This was home.

And that terrible country band I remember so well, has now become the pride and joy of Blake's Folly, and it's still playing away:

The Old Boy’s Band had, so far, destroyed the Tennessee Waltz, bungled Oh Suzanna in a hopelessly sadistic way, was now going for a full kamikaze hit at I Remember You. Even worse than the horrendous noise level, was the local idea of party togs: better-dressed ancestors were probably spinning at high velocity in their graves at this very moment.

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2019: The Year of the Planner

Happy New Year!


Big changes lie ahead for me this year. I have officially submitted my retirement paperwork; my last day at my day job will be April 30th. I face this change with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Trepidation because, well, let's face it - retiring is a big deal. I've been working since I was 16 years old. Excitement because I'm looking forward to a lot of things, not the least of which will be no longer getting up before the sun. (I'm not a morning person.)

I am a very detail-oriented person and an excellent time manager. Both of these traits have played an important role in my ability to perform the functions of my day job. However, with retirement only a few short months away, I'm already trying to figure out how to change my processes so they will continue to work for me in the future.

I love calendars. (Almost as much as I love Christmas wrapping paper, but that's another story.) I have one wall calendar at home that I use to keep track of birthdays and anniversaries. Everything else, such as doctor's appointments, I keep track of on one of my many calendars at work. Obviously, that option will end on April 30th. My husband and I have agreed to a monthly dry-erase board on the refrigerator as the best option for tracking appointments and I have already implemented that change.

But what about everything else? I also use my work calendar and a variety of multi-colored sticky notes to serve as reminders of bill due dates and various and sundry other things that come up. I have never been the type to use a personal planner; I had no need to due to the variety of calendars surrounding me at the two locales where I spend most of my time. But, I began to notice advertisements for a plethora of planners on various social media channels. As I researched them, I determined this would be the best route to take, but which one to choose? The sheer number of options was overwhelming. And expensive. I couldn't bring myself to spend $50+ on something that might or might not work for me. So, I made a trip to Target and purchased a $10 planner and a variety of pens, then went to Amazon and ordered stickers.

Let the planning begin!

My new planner has pages for monthly and weekly planning which I think will work well for me. I have had a blast getting it set up over the last few days. This planner will fill many of my needs, not just for managing appointments but it will also allow me to use my multi-colored pens to doodle and personalize pages while the stickers will take the place of the sticky notes I use at work. I know it's going to take a while for me to get used to a new process for tracking things but, if I start now, it should be second nature by the time retirement gets here.

What changes are you looking forward to this year?

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