Monday, September 28, 2020

ALL VISIBLE THINGS by Brian McPhee

 




All Visible Things
Brian McPhee
Historical Fiction


All Visible Things is a dual-timeline novel moving seamlessly between modern-day and Renaissance England and Italy.

When Lauren Patterson discovers the diary of a young assistant to Leonardo da Vinci, we are immediately immersed in the personalities and intrigues surrounding the archypical Renaissance man–and animal lover, vegetarian, dandy and bearer of grudges. When not executing the commissions of ungrateful clients, Leonardo juggles finances, apprentices, friends and rivals, all the while making time for his true passion–his pioneering scientific enquiries.

The diaries document a series of dramas–extortion, murder, defamation, betrayal and bitter artistic rivalries–played out against everyday struggles to extract money from clients, manage a hectic studio and, amidst the chaos, create timeless masterpieces, in particular the Mona Lisa, whose complex saga weaves through the narrative. The enthusiastic diarist is Paolo del Rosso, endlessly captivated by the vibrant life of Florence and enamoured of Chiara, Leonardo’s beautiful goddaughter and the model in some of his greatest paintings. Their tender, decades-long relationship is the constant thread through the Renaissance tapestry, as their lives are unwittingly unravelled by a devastating intrigue that unspools down the years.

The discovery of the diaries is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Lauren, but one threatened by academic jealousies, unwanted media attention and personal insecurities. However, a partnership and friendship develops between the young American researcher and an English art dealer as they come together to find the final pages of the diary and track down Paolo’s charming portrait of Chiara, drawn with the encouragement and assistance of Leonardo–a trail they follow from Renaissance Florence to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust to a thrilling dénouement when the portrait gives up its astonishing secret and our protagonists embrace their future.

While All Visible Things is a work of fiction, its themes and settings are based on extensive research into the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci and everyday life in sixteenth century Italy. It combines the sweep and drama of Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy with the intimacy of Tracy Chevalier’s The Girl with a Pearl Earring.

ORDER YOUR COPY

Amazon → US: https://www.amazon.com/All-Visible-Things-Brian-McPhee/dp/1983563374/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1983563374




May 2nd 1503

I have never seen Maestro Leonardo so angry. He announced his return from the home of Signor del Giocondo by slamming the door. He then swept his eyes around our bottega before fixing on Salaì. In a loud and harsh voice, he scolded Salaì for the untidiness of his workspace, then cast him out with a command to stay away until he could swear an oath to mend his ways. Maestro then stormed across to Agostino and berated him for the slovenliness of his vestments, driving him out also, declaring he should return only when newly bathed and attired in fresh clothes. I confess, at this I became extremely anxious, worried that I too would incur Maestro’s wrath for some fault.
Fortunately, his harsh words with Salaì and Agostino had sated my master’s temper, although not his anger.
Still with a rough tongue, he addressed me. “That despicable creature, that pretentious cloth merchant, had the temerity, the insolence, to demand–I tell you, Paolo, the scoundrel actually demanded–that I paint his miserable mouse of a wife, Mona Lisa.”
“No matter, Maestro, we will find another, a more worthy commission, I am certain of it.”
At this, I witnessed a peculiar transformation of my master. His entire person seemed to shrink as he threw himself onto a chair where he lowered his head into his hands.
His voice was muffled when at last he responded in his normal, pleasant voice.
“I regret very much, Paolo, that I had to accept Giocondo’s appalling commission. And you will weep at the miserable fee I was compelled to accept.”

Present Day – Oxfordshire

Lauren Patterson slumped back in her green leather chair and stared, mesmerised, at the extraordinary document in her hand. After what seemed an age, but was in fact no more than two minutes, she lifted her eyes and gazed blankly around the room, her thoughts in a tumult as she contemplated the implications of what she held in her hand. Absently, she admired the way the louvred blinds beside her sculpted the late afternoon sun into a pleasing arrangement of stripes marching resolutely across the gleaming surface of her desk. She tracked the alternating procession of light and shade, finally arriving at the battered box crammed with musty papers. The old container was newly beguiling, its siren whispers promising new secrets.













Brian McPhee lived in Glasgow, Scotland until he was 21, when he moved to London. In his early 40s, he emigrated with his wife and daughter to Maryland, USA. After a successful career in IT marketing and management, he and his wife moved once more, to Monpazier in southwest France. All Visible Things is his third novel.

WEBSITE: https://www.ententepublishing.com/



http://www.pumpupyourbook.com
 

UNDER A FULL MOON: THE LAST LYNCHING IN KANSAS by Alice Kay Hill



UNDER A FULL MOON: THE LAST LYNCHING IN KANSAS
Alice Kay Hill
True Crime

UNDER A FULL MOON: The Last Lynching in Kansas tells of the tragic abduction and death of an eight-year-old girl at the hands of a repeat offender in 1932. This crime stands apart as the last mob lynching in Kansas. Based on true events, this account takes a deep dive into the psycho-social complexities of pioneer times and their impact on this particular crime and the justice meted out to the perpetrator.

Beginning in the year 1881, and written in a chronological narrative non-fiction format, author Alice Kay Hill vividly weaves the stories of the victims and the families involved. She reveals how mental and physical abuse, social isolation, privations of homesteading, strong dreams and even stronger personalities all factored into the criminal and his crimes.

Spanning the years of settlement to the beginnings of the Dust Bowl, historic events are lived as daily news by the seven families whose lives become intertwined. Historically accurate and written with an intimate knowledge of the area, UNDER A FULL MOON is as personal as a family diary, as vivid as a photo album found in an attic trunk, and will remain with the reader long after the book is closed.




Amazon → https://amzn.to/3kI18XG


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Their son Addison Alanson (A.A.) is born on a spring day in 1889. Children are one crop that can be counted on. Drought, grasshoppers, late freezes and early frosts might take out fields and gardens, but the babies are persistent in their regular arrival. Mary is thirty-eight years old.

In rural homes a girl is trained for motherhood and learns the basics of house management through helping to raise younger siblings. Typically, not long after puberty, she will be married and delivering or nursing babies without let up for most of her life. Often her first daughters have children before she herself is done.

Mary gazes into her squalling newborn’s face and knows that his life can be taken in a moment. Though she would never know the numbers, she was clearly aware of childhood mortality. In 1870, two years after her marriage to Alanson and while they were living in Nebraska, 114 deaths occurred in their county. Nearly 100 of those were children, most less than five years of age.

Cholera infantum had taken their little boy, John. Mary would never forget his extreme distress as vomiting and diarrhea drained his life so quickly, his feverish lips cracking like parchment, his skin becoming translucent until she could trace his veins and see his heart thumping below his heaving chest.

Not long after John was buried a near neighbor lost her not quite one-year-old when he choked on a piece of seed corn. The frantic mother carried his lifeless body from home to home while screaming for someone to save her purple faced child. Anything and everything could happen to these defenseless babies. As she puts Addison Alanson to her breast Mary shivers, teeth chattering from childbirth strain and fatigue without hope or expectation of relief.

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Alice Kay Hill is passionate about her Kansas heritage. She has published in Hobby Farms magazine and written an instruction manual title GROW TOPLESS: A Modified High Tunnel Design for Headache Free Extended-Season Gardening which is available on Amazon. UNDER A FULL MOON: The Last Lynching in Kansas is her first narrative non-fiction work.







Thursday, September 24, 2020

New release: 'Somebody Else’s Troubles,' by J.A. English

Somebody Else’s Troubles by J.A. English 

Published by Zimbell House


An inventive, intriguing, and extraordinarily thought-provoking tale, Somebody Else’s Troubles centers on a titillating question: who among us hasn’t dreamed of walking to the corner store and simply disappearing?

About Somebody Else’s Troubles:  Ohio businessman Travers Landeman has plenty of troubles. Between a marriage that is loveless at best, a hateful, greedy, self-consumed wife, and a family business changing in unexpected and unwelcome ways, Travers copes in the best way he knows how: by making a conscious effort not to think.  But when his teenage nephew, Matthew Calkins, reaches out to him for help, Travers turns away. When his inaction causes unspeakable guilt, Travers fakes his death on the Caribbean Island of Mabuhay, an act that sets into motion a most unusual series of events—events that will bond together a most unusual cadre of people.

Years pass and it appears that Travers, now settled in to a new life with a new family and a new name, has gotten away with it.  Or has he?

The Atlantis Fidelity Insurance Company hires Albert Sydney McNab to bring Travers back to Ohio. But McNab, a bumbling, sore-footed, ne’er-do-well with a litany of failed careers—waiter, bus driver, door-to-door salesman—is surprisingly somehow hot on Travers’ trail.

Chicago bookseller Joe Rogers leads a group of amateur archaeologists to Mabuhay. Dealt a fistful of trouble when he acquired Chicago’s oldest bookstore, The Yellow Harp, Joe Rogers has a penchant for vodka, an abject ineptitude for following orders, and an abundance of useless knowledge. But at a dig site in Mabuhay, Rogers discovers an ancient treasure—a jeweled mask. Will Joe, who has his own axe to grind with Atlantis Fidelity Insurance, step off the sidelines and get back in the game?

Esmerelda McNab, United Nations Ambassador of the UN’s newest member nation, the Commonwealth of Mabuhay, has her own set of troubles—protestors who denounce her part in the sale of the mask that Joe Rogers discovered as “cultural genocide.”

Do love, peace, and redemption even exist on Mabuhay?  Or are somebody else’s troubles just that?

A brilliantly-rendered tale, Somebody Else’s Troubles takes readers on an unforgettable journey spanning from the streets of Chicago’s gritty Austin neighborhood to the remote island paradise of Mabuhay.  Resplendent with richly-drawn characters that spring to life in the novel’s pages, Somebody Else’s Troubles is peppered with wit and subtle humor. Novelist J.A. English delivers a clever, captivating, smart, seamless story replete with fascinating historical detail and literary allusion.   A beautifully written literary novel about escape and inertia, action and inaction, faith and doubt, and finding home—and hope—in the unlikeliest of places, Somebody Else’s Troubles is destined to stay with readers long after the final page is turned.


About the author:

A proud native of Paterson, New Jersey, J.A. English came of age in Mexico City, Mexico. He received his B. A. cum laude from Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and an M. A. from Rice University in Houston, Texas. English is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He has lived for a half century in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s west side, where he still maintains a residence, but now spends much of his time in Sosua, Dominican Republic. English is a widely-published writer whose works have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Reader and Co-Existence, the literary journal which featured the works of Henry Miller.  Visit J.A. English online at:  https://sites.google.com/view/somebodyelsestroubles/home

Find out more on Amazon

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Character Guest Post: Phillip W. Shurlan of Jasyn T. Turley's WEEKS #characterday

 



Today is character guest post day! We have Phillip W. Shurlan from Jasyn T. Turley's WEEKS. Enjoy!


Phil’s Memorandum
 
     Let this be a written account that we tried. Gosh, we did our very best, given all we’ve been able to give; tomorrow we’ll have to give a little more. What became impossible was barely possible, we crossed half the continent and braved the Great Gulf and the Leviathan that dwells there. Hoping, praying to God above for some kind of haven. We just want to live in peace, but they won’t leave us alone.
     We have a truck and plenty of diesel, for now, we scraped together a small cache of mid-twentieth century firearms. Never thought I’d be shooting an M1928, a Tommy Gun you might call it. Um, food supply is stable for now, we have plenty of water to go, but we’re low on everything else. We’re all pretty banged up, I’m not sure how far our bodies will let us push; hell we’ve been taxing them through the roof lately; and hardly anything for medical supplies to ease the burden. Tim, he said he could “live off of nails and toothpaste” for food if he had too.
     Tim, he’s such a pillar for me, but even now I feel like collapsing. Dakota, she’s a rock, but even ocean waves can wash over such foundations. My head is constantly splitting, and they look to me to make things right. But it seems I brought us to our deaths. I write this to anyone who finds it, the three of us made it this far. Tomorrow we’re going to the Canadian Air Force Base, north of the city. It’s our hope we’ll be able to piece together some kind of aircraft, anything that’ll work and fly north.
     God willing, we’ll leave Inimicus and the Jackle behind us. They won’t follow and they’ll stop pursuing. The night is always darkest before the dawn, but this night is so very long.
I pray for whoever reads this that you don’t have to face them. I pray these two freaks of nature will travel far away from this place to leave you in safety. You won’t have any way to know if we made it or not if we survived. But I only ask that you remember I, we, did our best. God bless you.
 
Philip W. Shurlan







Phil, Tim, and Dakota are three survivors taking refuge in Atlanta, Georgia. The year is 2027, ten years after a nuclear fallout decimated the known world and left it in shambles. With hordes of the undead flooding their once safe home and a city now depleted of all resources and supplies the three must make a daring gamble. To trek across the States and Canada, looking for a new place to call home; safe from the monsters that plague the lands.

In their daring gamble this trio encounters more than just zombies. They are relentlessly pursued and hunted by both an old and new nemesis’. Trying to survive and stick together, no matter the odds, they must rely on their faith, bond, and past experiences to live through their tribulations. In this world, a fool’s chance is usually their only chance.

 

Order Your Copy

Amazon → https://amzn.to/2Fw5Jc7




Jasyn T. Turley was born in Wyandotte County, Kansas City, Kansas; and lives in Independence, Missouri. He is an independent author and full-time custodian. He holds an Associates in Arts degree from MCC KC Community College. He started WEEKS Book One back in the summer of 2009 and has been continuously working on it, and its sequels, since then. He has more science fiction and fantasy books in the works that he plans on releasing in the future. You can learn more about Jasyn, WEEKS Book One, and future projects at https://turleybookinn.com/.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: http://turleybookinn.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JayFiction

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19608376.Jasyn_T_Turley

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

THE ANCESTOR by Lee Matthew Goldberg




THE ANCESTOR
Lee Matthew Goldberg
Thriller / Mystery

A man wakes up in present-day Alaskan wilderness with no idea who he is, nothing on him save an empty journal with the date 1898 and a mirror. He sees another man hunting nearby, astounded that they look exactly alike. After following this other man home, he witnesses a wife and child that brings forth a rush of memories of his own wife and child, except he’s certain they do not exist in modern times—but from his life in the late 1800s. After recalling his name is Wyatt, he worms his way into his doppelganger Travis Barlow’s life. Memories become unearthed the more time he spends, making him believe that he’d been frozen after coming to Alaska during the Gold Rush and that Travis is his great-great grandson. Wyatt is certain gold still exists in the area and finding it with Travis will ingratiate himself to the family, especially with Travis’s wife Callie, once Wyatt falls in love. This turns into a dangerous obsession affecting the Barlows and everyone in their small town, since Wyatt can’t be tamed until he also discovers the meaning of why he was able to be preserved on ice for over a century.

A meditation on love lost and unfulfilled dreams, The Ancestor is a thrilling page-turner in present day Alaska and a historical adventure about the perilous Gold Rush expeditions where prospectors left behind their lives for the promise of hope and a better future. The question remains whether it was all worth the sacrifice….

Praise for THE ANCESTOR:

“Lee Matthew Goldberg is an animal—there is no other way to say it. His prose is heavyweight ambitious, as visceral as a sweaty-toothed dog at your throat. He evokes Robert Louis Stevenson as much as he does a modern thriller novelist. And I’ll be honest: I expected a crime novel, but I got a spell-binding epic, an epistolary revelation, a tale as rich as a paying gold mine. The Ancestor is more than a novel. It’s an ode to the rich tradition of adventure storytelling…seasoned with ample spice of love and violence and greed.” —Matt Phillips, author of Countdown and Know Me from Smoke

“In The Ancestor, Lee Matthew Goldberg masterfully weaves together a story involving family and violence set against the backdrop of an unforgiving Alaska of both past and present.” —Andrew Davie, author of Pavement and Ouroboros

“From the icy opening battle of man vs. wolf, you feel yourself in the hands of a master storyteller and that feeling never lets up.” —SJ Rozan, bestselling author of Paper Son

“This thrilling novel is rich in descriptions of the vast, snowy, and deadly wilderness of Alaska; it ably captures the type of person who chases gold.” —Foreword Reviews

“A story that blends the familiar and the supernatural in a manner that calls Stephen King’s work to mind. That said, Goldberg’s book possesses a flavor all its own—a distinctive mélange of the sincere and the strange.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Beautifully written, and capturing the unforgiving grit of Gold Rush Alaska, Lee Matthew Goldberg’s The Ancestor is a thrilling page-turner with an ache in its heart. I’m a huge fan.” —Roz Nay, author of Hurry Home and Our Little Secret

“A suspenseful historical thriller.” —Indie Reader

“One of the year’s best thrillers. Blake Crouch fans will love Goldberg’s Alaskan opus.” —BestThrillers


Amazon → https://amzn.to/31Oays9


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1

       One eye open, the other frozen shut. He knows what an eye is, but that other “I” remains a mystery. Mind scooped out and left in ice. Words are hunted, slowly return. Blue sky, that’s what he sees. The sun twinkling like a diamond. Tundra, there’s another recalled word. Packed snow on all sides as if the world succumbed to white. The air a powerful whistle. A breeze blows, not a friend but a penance. It passes right through and chills to the core, this enemy wind. Limbs atrophied, no idea when they last moved. Boil of a sun thaws and prickles. Tiny spiders swinging from leg hairs, biting into flesh. He cries out but there is no sound. For it feels like he hasn’t spoken in centuries.
            Back of throat tastes of metal. Blood trapped in phlegm. A cough sends a splatter of red against the stark land, a streak in the form of a smile. When was the last time he ate? His stomach growls in agony, a good sign. Organs working, or at least attempting to work. His one eye scans to the left and the right, no sign of anyone, not even an animal. No chance for a savior or sustenance.
            He gums his jaw, the first inkling of movement. Aware of his scraggily beard coated in frost. Crystals spiral from his chin, collect in his lap. Now he sees his hands, luckily in gloves except they are a thin brown leather, rather useless. Bones crack as he maneuvers to remove the gloves. Fingers tremble once hit with fresh air and numbness subsides. Massages his legs, gets the blood flowing, an injection of life. The spiders accelerate and then relent, toes wiggle, and he sits up. Around his neck rests a notebook and a fountain pen, the tip crusted in flakes. He feels an object in a front pocket and pulls out a silver compact mirror, the back embroidered with floral patterns, ladylike. This is not my mirror, he decides, but then has a more important realization. Who am I? With trembling hands, he brings the mirror up to his face for a glance.
            The reflection of a stranger. All beard save for some features that emerge. A bulbous but authoritative nose, green eye flecked with gold, a mane of dark hair cascading to his shoulders. Handsome in a grizzled way. Shades of a bear in the roundness of his cheeks and a wolf in his stare.
            “I am…,” his lips try to say, but there is no answer. Often one can wake from a dream and the dream seems real for a moment, but a sense of self never vanishes. Whoever he was has been long gone, unlikely to return anytime soon. At least while he remains freezing in the wilderness.
            I must make it out of here.
            It’s relieving that he thinks of himself as an “I”. Whoever he is, he is someone. A mother birthed and fed him from her breast. A father taught him.…taught him what exactly? Survival skills? How to hunt? If he had a father worth his while, he’d know how to do this.
            And then, a caterwauling from the depths of his soul, a fawn-in-distress call that plants a trap for curious predators. He knows this sound well, meaning he’s lured prey before. His daddy schooled him like a good man should.      
            The waiting game. Another call erupts, a coyote’s howl this time. He can recognize the difference. Then it comes to him that he needs to know what to do should an animal appear. He pats down his pockets, no weapon but his fists. And then, the clinking of sharp nails against the ice sheet. A majestic wolf, eyes like the sky, shimmering coat the color of clouds. Its charcoal nose twitches; the blood he hacked up in plain sight. He and the wolf lock into a dueling stare, neither wanting to be the first to flinch. A vision of death with baring teeth, or the start of his new life if victorious. The wolf doesn’t give him a chance to contemplate, lunging with a mouth full of saliva. He catches it in a brutal embrace and becomes knocked off his heels, slamming his back against the hard ground. They skitter down a slick snowcap, snapping at one another like angry lovers. The wolf is relentless, a worthy opponent, a test of wills. He gets the beast in a headlock, trying to crack its neck, but the wolf is too slippery. Breath fumes from other kills circle into his nostrils—this wolf has never lost a battle before. Blood splashes, no clue which of them has been wounded. They spin in the snow like a tornado. He makes a fist, jams it in the wolf’s mouth. Teeth marks scrape against his knuckles as he rams his fist farther down the wolf’s throat. The wolf heaves, chokes, attempting to chew off his hand but its strategy is futile. It has only come across other animals, never a human mind that can think steps ahead.
            Now he attempts a headlock again with his left arm, squeezing off circulation. The wolf lets out a whimper that reverberates through his wrist. They lock into a dueling stare again, except this time he does not see the many kills of the wolf through its gaze. He visualizes its sadness, its inevitable end. And then, the sound of a heavy branch snapping, the wolf’s neck broken, his blood-soaked fist removed from the back of its throat. Its dead tongue lolling out of its mouth against the icy bed. He pets its beautiful coat, this formidable foe, now a present wrapped with a bow. Delectable to quench his all-consuming hunger.
He needs the clearest block of ice he can find. Using the wolf’s teeth to carve a fine translucent round piece, he creates a magnifying glass. He rubs the dirt away and keeps rubbing until enough moisture flecks off. There’s a bed of whittled grass at the slope he and wolf ended up in, and he holds the ice over the dry grass, propping it against two logs until a brilliant rainbow prism shoots through and ignites a fire. He rips off all the breakable branches he can locate to stoke the flames. While it continues to spread, he procures a rock to blunt out the wolf’s teeth, then uses them for the painstaking task of skinning the fur. He does it carefully so a semblance of a coat remains, which he dips into a nearby brook to wash away any lingering blood and sinew. The sun has mostly dipped behind the mountains and he wears the wolf’s coat to mask the chill, then roasts its carcass over the roaring fire, breaking off legs and gnawing while the true flesh still cooks.
            The meat is a godsend to his empty stomach and also an immediate poison that his body rejects by throwing up. But he sucks on some ice and the queasiness diminishes. By the time it’s fully cooked, darkness reigns and he feels more like a shell than anyone has before. Except with each chew, this lessens and soon he becomes human again. But the loneliness isn’t as easy to fight off. There are souls that feel lonely, he assumes, but at least they have themselves for company. They can rely on memories to help them through cold nights. He searches his mind for a wisp of the past, any nugget, wading through a never-ending sea. The horizon seemingly attainable, but with every stroke just as far away. He’d cry but the tears are frozen in his ducts, and his one eye still sealed shut.
            When enough of the wolf has been eaten so his belly distends like a newly pregnant woman, he feeds the fire with more broken limbs and curls up to its warmth, his only confident in this harsh wilderness, possibly his only companion forever—a lifetime of attempting to be caressed by flames and nothing more. He wraps himself tightly in the wolf’s fur, hoping that when he wakes again he’ll know who he is. The nightmare vanished along with the sun rising like a bride’s pretty little hand on his grizzled cheek.


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Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels THE DESIRE CARD, THE MENTOR, and SLOW DOWN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018 Prix du Polar. The second book in the Desire Card series, PREY NO MORE, is forthcoming, along with his Alaskan Gold Rush novel THE ANCESTOR. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in the anthology DIRTY BOULEVARD, The Millions, Cagibi, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press, Monologging and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City. Follow him at leematthewgoldberg.com

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: http://www.leematthewgoldberg.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/LeeMatthewG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leemgol
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53472461-the-ancestor





Thursday, September 10, 2020

Interview with Historical Romance Author Jackie Barbosa #interview #blogtour

Jackie Barbosa can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be an author when she grew up, but there were plenty of times when she wasn’t sure she ever would be. As it turns out, it just took her about twenty years longer to grow up than she expected!

On the road to publication, Jackie took a few detours, including a stint in academia (she holds an MA in Classics from the University of Chicago and was a recipient of a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities) and many years as a technical writer/instructional designer for a data processing company. She still holds her day job, but her true vocation has always been writing fiction and romance in particular.

Jackie is a firm believer that love is the most powerful force in the world, which that makes romance the most powerful genre in the world. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise!

 WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: http://www.jackiebarbosa.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackiebarbosa
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JackieBarbosaAuthor/

About the Book

When Mrs. Laura Farnsworth discovers the blood-stained body of a man wearing the distinctive red coat of the British army, her first instinct is to let dead dogs lie. It has, after all, been just two days since the Battle of Plattsburgh, and the disposition of enemy corpses is hardly her purview. But then the man proves himself to be very much alive by grabbing her ankle and mumbling incoherently.
After almost twenty-five years in His Majesty’s service, Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Langston never expected to wake up in heaven, much less being tended by an angel. But when he regains consciousness in the presence of a beautiful, dark-haired woman and with no memory of how he came to be there, what else can he think? Except it’s rather odd for an angel to have an American accent.

As the long-widowed Laura nurses the wounded Geoffrey back to health, the attraction between them heats from a simmer to a boil. Bound by his oath to the British crown, Geoffrey should be working to find his way back to his regiment and from the, to England. Instead, he’s sleeping with the enemy…and thereby committing the crime of desertion if not treason. But then, who’s going to find out?
If only Geoffrey didn’t have a family back home who refuse to take “missing in action” for an answer.

ORDER YOUR COPY

Amazon Kindle   *    Kobo    *    Nook   *   Apple


Can you tell us what your new book is about?

Sleeping with the Enemy is a Regency-era romance set around the end of the War of 1812. The heroine is Laura Farnsworth, an American widow who runs her family’s apple orchard and cider business near the town of Plattsburgh, New York. The hero, Geoffrey Langston, is an officer who has spent his entire adult life in the British Army. In the opening chapter of the book, Laura finds what she believes is the body of a British officer on the side of the road, but quickly discovers he is alive but seriously injured. She resolves to help him and thus begins the romance. There are, of course, plenty of obstacles for lovers who belong to opposing sides of a war!

Can you tell us a little about your main and supporting characters?

One of my favorite things about this book is that both the protagonists are somewhat older than in the typical romance. Laura is 38, has a seventeen-year-old son, and has been widowed for about a decade. Geoffrey is the second son of a British viscount who was raised with the understanding that he would join the military and when the book opens, he’s 44 years old and has spent almost twenty-five years in the army. I really enjoyed writing a book where the main characters had a lot of personal history to bring with them.

This book is also the fourth and final installment in the Lords of Lancashire series. Each of Geoffrey’s siblings (two brothers and a sister) have their own stories, although one of those books, Taking Liberties, is technically not part of this series. Most of Sleeping with the Enemy takes place eight years after the end of the previous story, A Matter of Indiscretion. This gave me a fun opportunity to revisit the characters from all the earlier books and show them and their children on the page. Of those characters, my favorite is Walter, the vicar hero of Hot Under the Collar. He’s just so steady and compassionate and clever, and I enjoyed being able to write about him again. So much so, in fact, that my next project is a Christmas-themed bonus epilogue to Hot Under the Collar. I expect to release that short story in October and all my newsletter subscribers will be entitled to a free a copy. You can sign up for my newsletter here: http://www.jackiebarbosa.com/newsletter.



Your book is set in Plattsburgh, New York and later in London, England.  Can you tell us why you chose this location in particular?

When I came up with the idea for this story, I knew that I needed it to be set near the end of the War of 1812. I didn’t want my main characters to have to deal with getting married when a war between their nations was going to continue for several more years. The Battle of Plattsburgh was the penultimate in the war and a stunning victory for the American army, which was heavily outmanned and outgunned. This confluence of location and events provided me with the setup for the romance and the larger plot.

How long did it take you to write your book?

{Laughs} I got the idea for the story shortly after I finished writing A Matter of Indiscretion (which I originally thought would be the last in the series), and that was back in August of 2018. So it you start counting from there, it took 2 years. That said, I wasn’t working on this book non-stop from then until finishing it this summer. I wrote a one novel and a novella (both contemporary romances) and also did a fair amount of not getting any writing done at all during that time.

One of my worst flaws as a writer is that I am great at coming up with story ideas and also pretty good at starting them. What I’m terrible at is sticking with the story all the way to the end. In the case of Enemy, I wrote about 15,000 words in early 2019 but then set it aside because other new, shiny ideas seemed like more fun and it was getting hard. But I picked it back up in February of 2020, reread what I had written, and everything just seemed to start clicking. From that point on, it took me about four months to finish.




What has been the most pivotal point of your writing life?

The most pivotal point in my writing life also the most pivotal point in my life, period: the death of my oldest son in March of 2014. He was 16 at the time and got into a head-on collision with another car on the way to school one morning. Julian and I were as much best friends as mother and son and after he died, I really didn’t believe I’d ever write another book. Moreover, if I did, I figured there was no way it would be a romance. After what happened to me and my family, how could I believe in happily ever afters?

I can’t say exactly how or why I got past that, but there was a turning point in early 2018 and I suddenly found myself wanting to write again. And to my surprise, what I most wanted to write was romance and happily ever afters. In the final analysis, I suppose I’ve come to realize that love is the most powerful force in the universe and that makes it the most important thing to write about.

What kind of advice would you give other romance authors?

There are only two rules in the romance genre as far as I’m concerned. 1. The central plot must revolve around a romantic relationship. 2. The story needs to end with a happily-ever-after (HEA) or at least a happy-for-now (HFN). If you don’t follow those rules, it’s not genre romance. But if you do follow those rules, feel free to stretch your imagination to its limits and most of all, have fun!

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

RECKLESS IN RED by Rachael Miles

RECKLESS IN RED
Rachael Miles
Regency Romance

Lena Frost is a force to be reckoned with. A woman who has made her way in society without family or fortune, she’s about to realize her first big success as an artist. . . . Until her business partner makes off with her money, leaving her with little more than her hopes—and a dead body in her studio. Now Lena is at the mercy of a strikingly handsome stranger demanding answers she dare not reveal . . .
Is it her seductive eyes, or his suspicion that she’s up to no good that have Clive Somerville shadowing Lena’s every move? Either way, his secret investigation for the Home Office has him determined to uncover Lena’s hidden agenda.  But the closer he gets to her, the more he longs to be her protector. Is she a victim of circumstance? Or a dark force in a conspiracy that could destroy everything Clive holds dear?  Discovering the truth could have dire consequences, not only for Lena, but for his heart . . .

Reckless in Red was a 2019 finalist for the Holt Medallion in Historical Fiction and a first-place winner in the 2020 National Federation of Press Women’s communications contests in the category Fiction for Adult Readers: Novels.

Praise for Reckless in Red

An artist preparing a huge exhibition is disheartened when her business partner absconds with her money, but the event introduces her to an aristocrat who ultimately becomes her greatest ally against a shadowy enemy.

Artist Lena Frost is a survivor. She’s survived a weak father and a difficult stepmother. She survived in France during Napoleon’s war. She’s even rebounded from her lost career when she finally had to flee France after having been betrayed. Now she’s spent three years preparing a huge exhibition, which is the talk of London. So when her trusted business partner disappears with all her funds just two weeks before the gala opening, she’s nearly defeated. Especially when he leaves her an enigmatic message implying she’s in danger. But she can’t give up: “She would have to reinvent herself again. The very thought of it made her almost weak with despair.” Fearing she’s being followed, she winds up at The African’s Daughter, a bookshop owned by her Anglo African friend Constance Equiano, who introduces her to the Muses, a group of aristocratic ladies who meet monthly at the shop. Through them, she meets Lord Clive Somerville, brother of the Duke of Forster and the Regency equivalent of a forensic pathologist. When it becomes clear that someone is trying to kill Lena and more than one of her exhibition artists has disappeared mysteriously, Clive vows to keep her safe, help her open the exhibition, and discover who’s behind the threats. Author Miles continues her smart, intriguing Muses Salon series (Jilting the Duke, 2016, etc.) with another bright, accomplished heroine who fights for her happiness with an unexpected perfect match.

A unique storyline, a dose of suspense, and a circle of intelligent female friends enhance a successful romance.
Kirkus Reviews

The suspenseful fourth in Miles’s Muses’ Salon series (after Tempting the Earl) captivates with clever prose and an unconventional heroine. In 1820 London, painter Lena Frost drifts on the fringes of society due to her checkered past, but she hopes that her upcoming exhibition will catapult her into artistic fame. Her hopes are dashed when her business partner disappears with all of their money. Then several people, all with some connection to Lena, are murdered. Enter Clive Somerville, who is the younger brother of a duke and is a surgeon who serves among the Home Office’s investigative ranks. His inquiries into the rash of killings lead him straight to Lena’s doorstep. His fascination with Lena blurs the lines between suspicion and desire, and his urge to question her quickly transforms into a need to protect her. The only flaw in this intricately crafted historical romance is the unbelievable speed at which the connection between the protagonists develops. Readers looking for a change from Regencies will find this witty Victorian tale refreshing.

Publishers Weekly






Amazonhttps://amzn.to/3ftmvby

 Barnes & Noblehttps://bit.ly/31cAnBO

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Winter 1820
“That damned swindler.”
From the office door of Calder and Company, Lena Frost could see the key, left precisely in the middle of the empty desktop. Everything else was gone: Horatio’s inkwell, his penknife, his little toys, even the carved bird he’d been toying with for the last several weeks. She knew what it meant: Horatio had left. For good.
But did he take the money? She snatched up the key as she rounded the desk. Perhaps he’d left it—or at least enough to pay the remaining craftsmen and open the ex- hibition. Perhaps: the word felt hollow.
Five of the six desk drawers stuck out several inches. Horatio had left in haste. She looked through the drawers, now a jumble. Unused correspondence paper in a variety of sizes. An assortment of bills, paid—because she had paid them—to the end of the quarter. A handful of artist’s crayons, almost used up. She picked up the sanguine pencil, its tip a ruddy red against her hand, then tossed it back into the drawer. Horatio was a talented artist, but his real skill was with words, most of them lies.
Nothing in the drawers was of any importance.
Only the drawer where she kept the money box was still shut. If the money was gone, her only hope would be to keep it quiet until she could open the exhibition. Subscribers had paid in advance to see what everyone was calling the most important art exhibition of the year. If she didn’t open, she’d have to refund their money. If she could make it two more weeks . . .
She hesitated before turning the key, torn between needing to know and dreading the knowledge.
No. Whatever is here—or isn’t—I will face it, as I always have. She turned the key. The drawer opened about four inches, then stuck. Hope bloomed for a moment. Perhaps the money box was still there, wedging the drawer in place, its banknotes and coin all still neatly arranged in di- vided trays. She pushed the drawer in, then tugged it out. But nothing would make it open wider.
She slid her hand in flat; there wasn’t room to make a fist. Then she inched her fingers forward. She felt nothing but the wooden bottom of the drawer. When she reached the halfway point, her stomach turned sour. The box was gone. But she kept reaching, needing to know the drawer was empty before she let herself sink into the despair already pooling inside her.
At the very back of the drawer, almost past her reach, her fingertips felt the edge of a thick piece of paper. A banknote? Perhaps he had left her enough to open the exhibition? Or at least to pay her rent? Pressing the tips of her fingers against the paper, she dragged it forward and out. The note was folded over twice, and she hesitated a moment, afraid of what it might tell her.
The paper was fine, well made, one of the sheets she used to correspond with wealthy patrons and subscribers. That in itself was strange: Horatio normally wrote on paper with a large watermark of Britannia in the middle of the page. He’d play a game with the ghost image, positioning his salutation so that Britannia would look at the name of the addressee or so that her spear would intersect with his period to make an invisible exclamation at the end of his sentences. Lena had shaken her head at his games, finding it hard to remain angry or frustrated with him. But if he’d endangered the exhibition, she might remain angry with him forever.
Tightening her jaw, she unfolded the page. In the center, Horatio had lettered a single word: “RUN.”
The despair in her stomach turned instantly to an unreasoning fear. Every creak, every groan of the old building sounded like a warning. Run.
She pushed the drawer closed, locked it, and replaced the key in the center of the desktop.
Surveying the room, she tried to imagine where Hora- tio might have hidden the money box. But, other than the desk, two chairs, and the old engravings stuck with pins to the walls, the room was almost empty. Everything was just as it had been for the last two years, except the money was gone, and Horatio with it.
All he’d left her was the note. She held it out, examin- ing the way Horatio’s R curved oddly beneath the bottom of the U, and the final stroke of the N trailed upward. An extra blotch of ink widened the line slightly before the tip, like the hand of a clock. She held the page up to the light. No watermark, no secret design that played with the letters.
She stood, her arms wrapped around her chest, the note limp in one hand. She’d never expected him to betray her, to leave her with no way out but to run. All her energy, her passion, drained out onto the wooden floor and seeped away between the boards. The exhibition would fail. She would fail. And this time she had nowhere to . . . run.
She traced the malformed letters of the note once more, then she crushed it against her palm and shoved it in her pocket.
From the outer office, the hallway door creaked open. When Horatio’d said run, she had no idea he meant so soon. Suddenly afraid, she scanned the room. The inner office door was partly open. The drop from the window to the street was three stories. She had nowhere to hide, and only seconds to make a decision.
Heavy footfalls approached. Though the crew and the ticket seller had left soon after she’d returned, the office door remained open to prospective subscribers until she or Horatio left for the evening. But should the intruder be dangerous, she would have no help. She looked down at her clothes, her best dress and coat worn to meet a pub- lisher who’d agreed to sell engraved prints of the panorama. With only a moment to imagine a plan, she flung herself into a chair before the desk. Her only hope was to pretend to be someone else.
A tall man, strongly built, pushed the door open. Stand- ing in the doorway, he seemed like one of the statues from the Loggia dei Lanzi come to life. And he was beautiful. His clothes caressed his form, revealing powerful shoul- ders, narrow waist, and firmly muscled thighs. His black hair curled in thick waves like Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus. In Florence, she’d marveled at the sculptures of the classical gods, their muscles detailed in marble or bronze. But she’d never realized how breathtaking it would be for those ancient heroes to come to life.
He examined the room slowly before he turned his attention to her. And when his eyes met hers, it was both exhilarating—and terrifying.
“Are you Mr. Calder? I wanted to subscribe to the ex- hibition in your Rotunda.” She kept her tone breathless and a little naive. “I saw a panorama once when I was a child—the Temples of Greece—and I’ve never forgotten it, how you could stand in the middle and feel as if you had been transported to a different place and time.” She spoke quickly, letting her words jumble together in a rush of enthusiasm. “I’m looking forward to seeing your painting. I’ve read all the clues you’ve advertised for de- ciphering the topic. I think it must be Waterloo. What else could be painted in such a grand scale? How hard must it be to paint all those figures—the horses, the flags, our men marching valiantly into battle? It must be such a glorious scene!”
“Don’t forget the carrion birds and the jackals ripping apart the bodies of the dead.” His voice was stern, but the sound of it resonated down the line of her spine. “Or the bodies broken apart by the cannon or the bayonet.”
“Well, sir!” She rose, feigning offense. “If you treat a prospective subscriber so rudely, I will spend my sixpence elsewhere.” She walked briskly toward the door. When he didn’t move out of her way, she stopped just out of his reach.
He was considering her carefully, examining her clothes and her figure beneath them. Under the focused attention, Lena felt exposed, like a rabbit who’d encountered a hungry hawk.
Refusing to be intimidated, she examined him in turn. His eyes were a cold green, his chin firm. His cravat, tied loosely around his neck, made her wish it was tied even more loosely. Her fingers itched for her sketchbook and pencil. Oh, that he would be just another would-be subscriber! Then—perhaps—she could convince him to sit for her. She pushed the thoughts away. He might be handsome, even devastatingly so, but if he were Horatio’s enemy, he would likely be hers as well.
He remained in the doorway, and his stare intensified. She felt the heat of it along her neck and cheeks. Her stomach twisted, but whether in attraction or fear, she couldn’t be certain. The silence between them grew, and Horatio’s message echoed in her ears: Run.
“Will you at least be a gentleman and remove yourself from the doorway?” She pulled her shoulders back, as she did with suppliers who wished to take their fee from Horatio instead of from her.
For a moment, he looked abashed, as if he hadn’t considered that his behavior was ungentlemanly.
“It appears we both have business with Calder, and we are both disappointed.” He stepped away from the door- way, giving her ample room to escape.
Then, as she passed, he offered her a low bow, as if she were a princess or queen. She felt his stare on her back as she walked purposefully, but not too quickly, to the outer office door. She refused to look back at him, afraid to reveal her fear—or her interest.
When she reached the outer door, she allowed herself one last look at her Greek-god-come-to-life, but he had already moved into the office and out of sight. She stepped into the hall, listening. A subscriber likely wouldn’t wait too long for Horatio to return.
She heard the desk drawers open and close, and papers rustle. Not a subscriber then, and her disappointment felt like a rock in the pit of her belly. She waited another minute, but when she heard him wrestling with the stuck drawer, she finally took Horatio’s advice. 
She ran.

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Rachael Miles writes ‘cozily scrumptious’ historical romances set in the British Regency. Her books have been positively reviewed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist, which praised her ‘impeccably researched and beautifully crafted’ novels, comparing her works to those of Jo Beverly and Mary Jo Putney. Her novel, Reckless in Red, won first place in adult fiction: novels in the National Federation of Press Women’s writing contest. A native Texan, Miles is a former professor of book history and nineteenth-century literature. She lives in upstate New York with her indulgent husband, three rescued dogs, and all the squirrels, chipmunks, and deer who eat at her bird feeders.