PERSONAL THOUGHTS

The 6th Turn: Kat by Ren Garcia

 

Ren Garcia is a Science Fiction/Fantasy author and Texas native who grew up in western Ohio. He has been writing since before he could write, often scribbling alien lingo on any available wall or floor with assorted crayons. He attended The Ohio State University and majored in English Literature. 
 
Ren has been an avid lover of anything surreal since childhood. He also has a passion for caving, urban archeology, taking pictures of clouds, and architecture. He currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife, and their four dogs.

~ Website ~
Raised in the dark under the lash of the Black Hat Sisterhood, when the woman who would become known as Kat, is sent on a suicide mission into the heart of the League, she was not expected to survive. Her mission: discover the identity of the fabled Shadow tech Goddess, a being who does not exist. All other considerations, including her possible death, are secondary.
 

 

But, Kat is guided by higher powers, by merciful hands that feed her, clothe her and whisper in her ear. As she watches the sun rise for the first time, she recalls their words: “Be strong,” they said. “You have much to live for.
 
 
 
 
 

 

Q&A With the Author:
1.      Tell
us about things you enjoy — what you do for fun or personal satisfaction
besides writing?  
–I like to play volleyball, ice hockey and go cave exploring.
2.      When
did you first realize you were an author?  
–Since 1st or 2nd grade. I’ve always
had a big imagination.
3.      Have
you done anything writing-related, but besides actually writing your books,
that seemed to get a lot of positive response? Something that encouraged
you?   
–Not that I can think of.
4.      What
is the thing you struggle with the most while writing? And how do you defeat
it? 
 –After 13 books, it’s difficult to stay fresh and original. I try
not to repeat myself, but it gets tough sometimes.
5.      What
is the “message” of your writing? (For example, is your purpose to encourage
old-fashioned values, encourage romance, or do you have different purposes in
different books?)  
–My hidden messages and themes vary with the books. For Kat—I tried to
demonstrate that all things, no matter how unlikely, have the potential to
better themselves.
6.      Are
your characters/stories/scenes, etc. based on anything in real
life?  
–Not really. Sort of, but no.
7.      What
are your future projects?  
–Still trying to finish the Shadow tech goddess series, and then, who
knows …

 

 

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page Part 1 
and Official Event page Part 2 

 

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California Crush by Debbie White

Debbie currently lives on the west coast with her husband and two dachshund rescues, Dash and Briar. She loves to hike, work in the garden, and on most sunny days you can find her enjoying her backyard with a glass of wine.

 

She’s an avid supporter of animal rescue, and as a pledge to all animals seeking their forever home, she happily donates a percentage of all book sales to local and national rescue organizations. When you purchase any of her books, you’re also helping animals.

 

~ Facebook ~ Website ~
~ Twitter ~ Pinterest ~
~ Bookbub ~
Breanna Murphy has been planning her wedding for years so when her fiancé runs off with a hula dancer, she is forced to realize her destination wedding is nothing more than an exotic vacation for one.
Trying to escape the embarrassment and disappointment of being jilted at the altar, Breanna answers an ad for a job clear across the country. When the voice on the other end offers her the job, she’s excited about what awaits her in California.
Builder Calvin Comstock must make right on his daughter’s mistake regarding the nationwide advertisement and hiring of Breanna. He doesn’t know what to expect, but when Breanna walks into his office with her infectious smile, peaches and cream complexion not to mention her sexy southern drawl, Calvin is happy for his daughter’s error.
Breanna is drawn to Calvin’s mature movie star good looks, charming personality, soft voice, and strong hands. She’s trying to stay focused on the job and not the overwhelming lure she feels pulling her in to test the waters. But when the two realize the attraction is mutual they throw caution to the wind and give in to the undeniable desire to be together.

Can an ex-wife and a teenage daughter spoil their happiness or will it make them stronger than ever?

Q&A With the Author:
1.     Tell us about things you enjoy — what you do for fun or personal satisfaction besides writing?
I love to read of course! I also love to take long walks, work in my garden and plan vacations!
 
2.     When did you first realize you were an author?
I guess when I published my first book, lol. I never really set out to be an author, but instead decided to give it a try. I enjoyed the challenge and from there just kept going.
 
3.     Have you done anything writing-related, but besides actually writing your books, that seemed to get a lot of positive response? Something that encouraged you?
I got great praise for my writing while in college. It stuck in the back of my mind.
 
4.     What is the thing you struggle with the most while writing? And how do you defeat it?
If it could only just be writing, sigh. The marketing, the newsletter, the promos, it all gets rather overwhelming.
 
5.     What is the “message” of your writing? 
My message is you can have a romance with strong emotion without all the sex. I don’t like reading books with a lot of description therefore I don’t write them either. I also like my female characters to be strong and independent.
 
6.     Are your characters/stories/scenes, etc. based on anything in real life?
Absolutely! I always take from my life and add them into my stories. The trick is to figuring out which is real and which is fiction!
 
7.     What are your future projects?
I’m finishing up book five of the Romance Across State Lines Series. I’ve also been invited to write a Christmas story for a small press. If things work out, I might write more for them. I have a big move coming up in the spring. We’re moving from California to South Carolina to be near our adult children and grandchildren. So, although 2019 promises to be a great year, I probably won’t be as productive in writing as last year. It’s all good though!
 

 

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page Part 1 
and Official Event page Part 2 

 

 

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All the Wrong Places by Rebecca Fisher

 

 

“I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, the second of four children. Growing up with the influence of a long line of teachers with a passion for classical education, my time was filled with lessons in violin, cello, piano, ballet…and not-so-classical Girl Scouts and softball.
At the age of twelve, I traveled throughout Europe with my Grandmother and aunts, who filled my days with the shared reading of classics such as Jane Eyre and Sherlock Holmes, developing my love of literature early on.
I pursued my love of literature into college, earning a Bachelor’s of English, a Master’s of Education, and I am currently working to complete a Master’s in English.
My first novel, All the Wrong Places, started as a short story for a creative writing course and chronicles many of my experiences living in a mortuary, raising my daughter on my own and discovering my Christian faith.
My years in college writing programs have left me with a varied collection of short stories, plays and poetry covering many personal experiences from teenage rebellion to single-motherhood and spiritual awakening.
While writing and continuing my own education, I taught High School English in an attempt to pass my love of literature and writing on to others, and continue to share that passion with students and other aspiring writers.
I currently spend my days pursuing my creative dreams and reaching out to women to share my experience, strength and hope as a survivor of sexual assault and domestic abuse. 
I reside in Eagle, Idaho with my husband,  and my very large cat. “

 ~ Website ~
Driving aimlessly through the stormy suburbs of San Francisco, Casey Wheeler is fleeing from her abusive and unfaithful husband with her five year old daughter Maddy asleep in the backseat. With nowhere to go and no one to turn to, Casey loses control of her emotions and her car, crashing into a hillside below a mortuary. 
 
Desperately seeking shelter, and more so independence, she finds herself taken in by the mortuary director who apprehensively offers her a job and a place to live. As she stumbles through the ins and outs of her new and morbid surroundings, Casey is forced into a hostile custody battle with her relentless and increasingly violent husband. 
 
In the midst of all the chaos, she finds a new family and even love in the eccentric and protective people of Golden Oaks Funeral Home. But just when she has found all she could hope for, she will have to fight to the death to protect it.

 

This semi-autobiographical story of a single-mother and her journey to self-discovery, independence and a true understanding of love will keep readers captivated and yearning for more.
Q&A With the Author:
1.     Tell us about things you enjoy — what you do for fun or personal satisfaction besides writing?
Most of my enjoyment comes from spending time with my people. It doesn’t really matter what we do if we’re together. I’d say eating good food together would be at the top.
2.     When did you first realize you were an author?
I have a collection of poems and short stories from family members, written by me under the age of ten, and they remind me of that compelling force to write, the stories and thoughts trying to find their way out.  It had its grip on me even at that young age. Writers must write. It’s an urge, a restlessness. I had it. Or it had me. 
3.     Have you done anything writing-related, but besides actually writing your books, that seemed to get a lot of positive response? Something that encouraged you? 
I write and teach science curriculum, which has been my other creative and professional pursuit. It’s fun to find creative ways to explore science with young children. 
4.     What is the thing you struggle with the most while writing? And how do you defeat it?
Getting started and pushing past the ogre of perfectionism are the hardest things for me to overcome with every new project, or new chapter. I have to remind myself that the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to have a beginning.
5.     What is the “message” of your writing? 
I like to use my own experiences and struggles to offer hope to others. For instance, All the Wrong Places touches on domestic abuse and single-motherhood, both of which I’ve survived. I want to acknowledge the struggling, but show that there is hope for happiness and redemption. 
6.     Are your characters/stories/scenes, etc. based on anything in real life? While my books are fiction, I would call them semi-autobiographical in that I have lived many of the circumstances and overarching themes. 
7.     What are your future projects?
I have started a Christian fantasy series, and have a chapter available on my website at http://www.rebeccafisherbooks.com. I am also working on a children’s science series. 
 
 

 

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page Part 1 
and Official Event page Part 2 

 

 

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2019 Margaret Margaret

Charlie’s Choice by Zina Abbott

 

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.

 

Prequel to the Atwell Kin series:

Charlie, it would be easier to stop the flow of the great Missouri and Kansas Rivers than to prevent the Americans from coming to Kansas. 
 
It is 1856, and the United States opened Kansas Territory to American settlement two years before. Land belonging to the once-powerful Kansa tribe, known to the whites as the Kaw, was sold by treaty to the Americans a generation earlier.His Kansa mother died from smallpox while Charlie was young. He lives with his American father who owns a trading post in Bonner Springs near the junction of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. A child of two nations, Charlie learns through harsh experience he is not always accepted, including by the father of the pretty redhead who has caught his eye. The arrival of thousands of white settlers makes matters worse.

Frustrated, Charlie visits his Kansa uncle to learn the tribal ways, travel the Kaw Trail to their buffalo hunting grounds, and become a warrior with a warrior’s name. Once he knows both worlds, he will decide which will best serve him in the future.

Meadowlark’s traditional father wishes her to marry Broken Wing, a highly-respected full-blood Kansa warrior close to his own age. Meadowlark rejects being the junior wife under a dying oldest wife and a wolverine of a second wife. Once she learns her childhood friend who left the tribe years earlier has returned to the Kansa, she seeks him out. Even if he does consider her for a wife, can she persuade her father to allow him enough time to prove himself as a warrior? Will her father accept him for her husband in spite of his mixed ancestry?

Will Charlie decide on a future with the white Americans, or will he fight the coming of the Americans by clinging to the past with the Kansa? Will he try to straddle both worlds? What will Charlie choose?

 
Q&A With the Author:
1.  Tell us about things you enjoy — what you do for fun or personal satisfaction besides writing?
I have been making lap quilts. I came across my collection of pink cancer ribbon fabric last summer and thought, I need to make a few quilts ahead for friends who end up seriously sick and need a friendship token or something they can wrap around them or look at when they are too sick to do much else. The next thing I knew, I had one friend after another develop serious health issues (a consequence of being older). I’m behind, but enjoying designing the quilts for each recipient. I have yet to use the pink cancer ribbon fabric, but will make at least one quilt using it when I get caught up.
2.  When did you first realize you were an author?
When I was in junior high school, I used to stay in my downstairs bedroom to write short stories instead of watching television with my family. Now, being a PAID author – that took a little longer.
3.  Have you done anything writing-related, but besides actually writing your books, that seemed to get a lot of positive response? Something that encouraged you?
When I worked for the U.S. Postal Service as a rural letter carrier, I also worked many years as a release-time union steward representing many offices in many counties. My ability to research, interview, organize facts, and then write up grievance files and research reports is what helped me succeed. It was more technical/legal writing rather than fiction, but I enjoyed it.
4.  What is the thing you struggle with the most while writing? And how do you defeat it?
I struggle most with everyday life interfering. I struggle with balancing helping others with ending up being the go-fer slave of others to help them accomplish THEIR projects while mine languish.
5.  What is the “message” of your writing?
My historical romances often draw from my genealogical research regarding laws that particularly affected women—their rights, or more to the point, their lack of rights when it came to property, voting, inheritance, etc. Even in the book I’m featuring today, my hero becomes aware of his lack of inheritance rights because of the circumstances of his birth.
6.  Are your characters/stories/scenes, etc. based on anything in real life?
See number five, above. I get annoyed with so-called historical authors who do not do the research and write about contemporary laws, rights and attitudes in historical settings. I try to have my characters either display some of the attitudes of the day, run up against said attitudes in other characters in the story, or realize what they are up against legally. Also, most of my books include actual historical events and even real historical characters.
7.  What are your future projects?

 

I will be publishing Virginia’s Vocation, which is my next book in the Lockets & Lace multi-author series. It is also my next book in the Atwell Kin after Charlie’s Choice which I’m featuring today. I will be publishing Diantha which is my second book in The Widows of Wildcat Ridge multi-author series. In addition, I have two longer books I wrote two and three years ago. They both need a little fine-tuning research, some revision and copy-editing. I will be working on them, and hope to publish at least one of them before the end of the year.
 

 

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page Part 1 
and Official Event page Part 2 

 

 

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2019 Margaret Margaret

Foreign Relation by Didi Lawson

 

 

Didi Lawson exchanged her town car for a pick-up truck and learned to operate a tractor when she and her husband moved from Arizona to a farm in  Missouri where she now weaves her tales. Her love for writing started early in  life when  she entertained her friends with her stories, won prizes for he essays in high school and wrote road shows and poems for the youth group in her church. She enjoys the outdoors, her children and ten grandchildren, and keeps an active social calendar.

It was supposed to be simple traveling to Germany to find her roots. But nothing turns out the way Tracy had planned. 
 
She meets a man who professes to be her half-brother and is less than happy with her visit. The villagers treat her with contempt for her father’s presumed infamous past. 
 
Trying to solve the mystery, she uncovers secrets that had been hidden for over two decades. Wanting to clear her father’s name, she realizes that by doing so she will ruin her chances of a happy life with the man who had captured her heart.

 

 
 
 
 
Q&A With the Author:
1.     Tell us about things you enjoy — what you do for fun or personal satisfaction besides writing?
a.     I like people, associate with them. I also love nature and traveling.
2.     When did you first realize you were an author?
a.     In my 40’s
3.     Have you done anything writing-related, but besides actually writing your books, that seemed to get a lot of positive response? Something that encouraged you?
a.     I won prizes for my essays in High School, wrote road shows and limericks for the youth group in my Church, and worked as assistant editor for a trade magazine
4.     What is the thing you struggle with the most while writing? And how do you defeat it?
a.     There are actually 2 things: writer’s block (write anyway even if you have to erase it the next day), and remembering to show rather than tell the story. This one is a hard one for me. I just have to be cognizant of that flaw and correct it when editing
5.     What is the “message” of your writing?
a.     I’m trying to promote old-fashioned values, see the good in people, write for the heart and give the reader an escape from everyday life. My stories try to make the reader feel good.
6.     Are your characters/stories/scenes, etc. based on anything in real life?  
a.     Sometimes
7.     What are your future projects?
a.     I’m working on a Christmas story, a fairytale and sequels to some of my existing books.

 

 
 

 

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page Part 1 
and Official Event page Part 2 

 

 

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2019 Margaret Margaret

Salem Grey Series by Raymond Lee Hegsted

 

Raymond Hegsted was Born in Juneau, Alaska and raised by a truck driving Dad. Joined the Army on voluntary draft and served with 4th infantry Regimental Intelligence and Reconnaissance reaching the rank of corporal.
 
He spent time living and working in Italy where he also got the chance to travel to many other European countries. After returning to America he helped develop a computerized scheduling system for the Oklahoma Scheduling Department.
 
After ten years of marriage ended in divorce he was sent to Ohio to head up corporate scheduling. Here he married second wife, Dr. Glena Louise Hegstad (A Montessori teacher). He then took early retirement, started and managed 5 different Montessori Daycare Schools (three of them in Flagstaff, Arizona under the name of The GlenMar Corporation).
 

Raymond wrote his first book at the age of sixty-one.  His wife got her Doctorate in education and he wrote books. He love writing! One of the reasons he decided to write was “I got tired of seeing ever one else on TV; I was vicariously living their life and not my own. Everyone had a story…share yours.” He and his wife and have enjoyed many years with their four+one children…one child adopted them. They have been happily married for many years.

~ Amazon ~
~ Goodreads ~
Obsessed with finding a serial killer whom he has chased for years, Salem Grey has moved to a small town in Littleton, Washington. 
 
Operating as a police chief and from his compound home, he is finally closing in. With the help of his lady forensic M.E., A dangerous and shocking reality is being unveiled. 

~ Goodreads ~
 

 

 Dr. Riva Parker Grey, Md and Chief of Police Salem Grey go to Las Vegas where Riva is to be the Keynote Speaker at a forensic conference. They meet old friends, but quickly get drawn into a strange series of murders. 
 
As the bodies begin piling up the twists and turns fueled by lies, deceit and unruly children make the investigators feel as though they keep making unneeded or wrong turns in a giant maze.

~ Goodreads ~ 

 

When mass graves are discovered in a glacier and also in the south-west desert of California, Salem Grey is called in to track down the killer or killers.

 
One of the victims is a woman whom Salem had once dated. Back at home trouble ignite when jewel hunters arrive in Littleton, Washington. Salem’s half brother and his new bride become deeply involved. Faithful dogs, Otto, Fritz and Sarg stand ever ready to protect their friends.
~ Goodreads ~

 

Snippet From Book 2:
 
At first, the meeting with Gordon Brown had gone okay; not great, but as well as Doctor Cecily Windgate had expected it would be. After his last stint in prison, ‘Gordy’ wasn’t the enthusiastic lover he once was. When it was early in the morning, they left the motel and Cecily took him to her penthouse. She had hoped being at her home would relax the x-convict, it didn’t.
   The pool was not large, but it overlooked the city. The ornamented city lit up the entire panorama while the edge of the pool looked as if it were a waterfall whose stream would nourish the desert city below. Gordon rested his arms on the edge of the pool and allowed the tepid water to soothe his weary body. “So, Doc, what’s this job you got for me; I hope it’s not one of those casino security things. Nope; no siree, I just don’t take well to those stuffed shirts and bow ties…not my style.”
   She wanted to respond by asking him if ‘prison grey’ was more his style, but she refrained. Cecily looked at him, he had really changed, no longer was he the devil may care guy she knew; for the first time since she met Gordon Brown, she was a bit frightened of him. “I’ve got a patient who is terminally ill, Gordy, she wants to commit suicide, but she is too scared to do it.”

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

 

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2019 Margaret Margaret