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Getting Close!
No Time for Surprises launches on February 8th! I’ve posted an excerpt here!
No Time for Surprises
Releasing in early February!
This short romance novel is the last in the No Brides Club series from Sweet Promise Press. Here’s the unofficial blurb:
Three years ago rising star programmer Julie Harrison was forced to leave her job in disgrace when code from a project she was working on leaked to a rival company and all signs pointed to her as the guilty party. Worse yet, her fiancée and co-worker, Daniel Foster, believed in her guilt, and their relationship imploded as a result. Heartbroken and devastated, Julie found support in a group of friends who all decided to swear off romance and throw themselves into their careers. Through hard work, taking some chances, and a bit of luck she has become a successful freelance software developer whose work commands high prices.
Dan Foster has wondered for some time if he made a mistake when he chose to trust the evidence that Julie had leaked code to a rival, instead of believing her denials. His own ambition to become chief operating of the company made him quick to take the company’s side, but reaching that goal didn’t bring the fulfillment he hoped. He fears he may have made the wrong choice and paid too high a price for his success.
Julie is shocked to learn that Dan’s company has bought out the group that represented her software. She isn’t happy that they’ll be forced to work together again. Dan recognizes that he has a second chance with her. Though the attraction is still there, Julie won’t risk her heart by trusting Dan. When disaster threatens to strike again, can Dan convince her he believes in her and she can trust him to have her back this time? Can these one-time enemies recapture the love they let slip away once before?
Winter has arrived in Greensboro
On Sunday it snowed. And snowed. And snowed. Sunday evening it turned to ice and freezing rain, but by Monday morning it was snowing again. In all we had somewhere over a foot of snow. You northerners may scoff, but this is North Carolina, y’all, and that’s a LOT of snow for us.
Taken from my back door during the storm.
Today, Tuesday morning, most of the snow is still there-covering walkways and everything else. The main road in front the house has seen a single snowplow go through, making one lane passable. The road beside the house (we live on a corner) hasn’t been plowed at all and only a few cars have braved the effort.
Yesterday my husband helped a driver who got stuck trying to make the turn onto the road beside the house. He didn’t have snow tires and his low-slung car couldn’t push through the snow.
My side yard and my poor, bedraggled rose garden, buried. As you can this road hasn’t been plowed at all.
A Very Gothic Christmas Wish
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Every year for the past several, I’ve pulled out this poem, tweaked it, and added to it. I’ve finally finished it, but I doubt that will keep me from editing it a bit more next year.
A Visit with the Vampire on Christmas Eve
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the hall
The vampire prepared for his last night of all.
A hundred years gone and the urge to drink blood
He’d struggled against and so far withstood.
With dawn’s early light, his cursed life would end;
His soul, however, he’d maintain and defend.
When out on the porch there arose such a clatter,
He trudged to the door to see what was the matter
When what to his wondering eyes should appear
But a young woman shivering with cold and fear.
Her face it was pretty, her blood warm and sweet
To him, she was temptation, from her head to her feet.
Forced off the highway and lost on a back road,
With her car in a ditch, she’s alone alone in the cold
Ignoring his warning that his presence meant danger
Carol opted for shelter and passed time with the stranger.
Memories of Christmases long gone they traded,
Gifts and feasts and treasures long faded,
And of the terrible night, a century ago,
When a vampire stole his life and his hope.
As he suffered the death throes of blood-hunger pollution,
She struggled to help him and find a solution.
When an enemy dastard showed up to gloat
And tries to make Carol a sacrificial goat,
She’s no willing victim and fights for her life
And to help Michael get through a long night of strife.
He gives her a hint how his life might be won
As he goes out to meet the final morning’s sun.
But will she succeed in the difficult task?
Or bid him goodbye and rest in peace at last?
Go buy the story to learn Michael’s fate
Merry Christmas to all, and don’t read too late!
Visiting: Dungeness
The Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway is a 15-in gauge light railway in Kent, England, that operates small trains between Hythe on the northern end and Dungeness on the southern end. It features coal-fired, steam-powered engines kept in pristine condition that pull a train of five to a dozen passenger cars. It looks like a beautiful, overgrown toy, but it works and is popular with locals who use it to commute between towns and tourists and holiday visitors who come in summer for the beaches and mild climate.
(Pictures are at the end and you can click on each to see a larger version.)
During our recent visit we got on at Hythe and rode it all the way to its far terminus in Dungeness. The trip takes about an hour, with stops at three stations in between, rolling through long, scenic stretches of the Romney Marsh (now drained and reclaimed for farm and grazing land).
Dungeness features one of the strangest landscapes imaginable. It sits on a spit of land that juts out into the English Channel, coming to a sharp point. Most of the surface is shingle (rocks), ground into sand in places. Vegetation is sparse and mostly in the form of a low-growing plant that my daughter-in-law called sea cabbage.
Habitation is equally sparse but a few widespread cabin-like houses do occupy the land. Many of them are painted flat, matte black. Mostly they belong to fishermen these days since the land is useless for agriculture or grazing. Some of the few residents work at one of the two nuclear power plants situated there. (We’re told one has been decommissioned and no longer functions.) It’s not hard to see why someone might decide it was a good place for an operation on one wants nearby.
Because it’s on a point that sticks out into the English Channel, there are two lighthouses to warn shipping traffic away, an older one and a new electric model.
The day we went was beautiful, with plenty of sunshine and reasonably warm temperatures, so we spent quite a bit of time on the beach. The kids ran around on the shingle, studying the stones, finding the occasional shell, and watching the water.
Next we visited the Old Lighthouse and climbed all 169 steps to the top, including the last dozen or so that were actually more ladder than staircase. Signs recommended that people descend those steps backwards and we all complied. Thoughtfully the lighthouse managers provided interesting displays on two intermediate platforms, providing a welcome excuse to pause and catch your breath periodically.
The observation deck at the top provided a panoramic view of a landscape that looks just as beautifully bleak from above as it does on the ground. Looking north, on a clear day you can see Folkestone and the white cliffs of Dover. On the east you can see France across the channel. The water was gorgeously blue that day and several large ships were visible in the distance.
A late lunch came from The End of the Line restaurant. It wasn’t gourmet food, but the kids enjoyed the fish and chips, and I found the scampi and chips quite acceptable.
On the train trip back to Hythe both children fell asleep and the rest of were a bit dozy as well. But we’d had a terrific day.
One of the trains on the line.
We were on the first train of the day and they had to bring the engine from another station. We wondered how they would turn it around and here’s the answer.
Dungeness. Nuclear power plant on the left, old lighthouse on the right.
Freya and James playing on the beach.
Jim and Joe in front of the newer lighthouse.
The old lighthouse.
View from the top of the lighthouse out to sea. A train is just pulling into the station below.
A Trip to Kent
During the second half of the month of August, we made our way to Hythe, Kent, U.K. to visit our son, Joe, his wife, Steph, and their two children, Freya (4) and James (2).
High Street of Hythe (The picture is actually from a previous visit.)
Mercifully we had no major travel issues on this trip. For the most part flights took off and landed when they were supposed to. Turbulence and other disturbances were minimal. Of course, the flight across the ocean is long and I just don’t seem able to sleep on planes, but there were a couple of movies I wanted to see available, and I’d loaded my ereader with several books from authors I knew I liked, so I weathered the journeys reasonably well.
We arrived in a pouring rain and when Joe came to meet us, an accident on the Motorway around London meant we took some extensive detours to avoid the logjam. But by later that day, the rain let up and for the most part we had great weather.
It was wonderful to see everyone again! We had a great visit that involved a lot of walking around the area, a couple of longer day trips to visit interesting places, and spending lots of time talking, eating, and playing with the family.
Steph’s parents graciously welcomed us to stay in their home and we enjoyed spending time with them and the comfortable arrangements they provided. It certainly made the trip easier on all of us.
You can read my musings on how wonderful it was to be able to walk to so many places at the Classic ‘n’ Cozy Blog here.
More details on some of the side trips we took and a few odd details of the visit to come. Stay tuned.
All of us (except me, taking the picture) with Steph’s parents and grandparents.
Baseball Days in Atlanta
We’re long-time baseball fans who recently took a road trip to Atlanta to take in a couple of Braves games. It rained. The entire time. Or almost the entire time. There were a couple of intervals of a few hours when it mostly quit.
The drive from our home in North Carolina to Atlanta was marked first by construction along I-85 that extended for probably 80% of the route, followed by increasingly heavy rain as we made our way into Georgia. It was coming down in torrents by the time we approached the city. Finding your way around Atlanta isn’t fun under ideal conditions. With visibility at about five feet in front of us, we had a long stretch of white-knuckle time.
The Battery with fans walking toward the stadium.
Mercifully we made it to our hotel without scratch or dent and only an hour or so later than we’d anticipated. We still had enough time to check in, get settled, and debate the likelihood that the first Braves’ game we had tickets for that night would actually happen. After consultation with weather maps and other online crystal balls, we put the odds in the unlikely zone, but we headed over to the ballpark anyway.
Our hotel was right across the street from the Battery area which made it an easy if rather damp walk. The new Battery area next to SunTrust Park is an intriguing place, though climactic conditions inhibited our desire to explore. We were seriously hungry, however, and ducked into a pizza place for food and shelter. That was the first nice surprise of the day. The Pizza Margherita was excellent, reminding us strongly of the dish of the same name we’d had a couple of times in Italy. The wine was also quite good. We ate outside on a covered porch, watching streams of fans approach the ballpark, protected by umbrellas and rain slickers.
Eventually we finished up and joined them.
This is how the park looked as we entered from the right field gate.
Half an hour before the original scheduled start time, it was clear the game would not get underway at seven-thirty. The tarp was still on the field and rain poured down. The weather map I consulted on my phone did offer rays of hope in the form of a small break in the rain that appeared to be approaching. We hung around the park with several thousand other people, checking out the various shops, food stands, and the Brave’s Hall of Fame. (More on that later.)
Eventually more signs of hope emerged. The rain lightened. Ground crews came out and began sweeping water off the tarp. By eight, the rain had abated and the crew began earnestly getting the field ready. It was actually pretty interesting watching how they maneuvered the huge, bulky tarp and then put down the lines for the games. At eight-thirty they announced the first pitch would take place at nine.
And it did! The rain didn’t stop entirely but it settled down into a heavy drizzle that might not have been fun for players but did allow the game to be played.
They played a great game! Number 5 is Freddie Freeman playing first base.
By sheer beginner’s luck, we had seats that were close to the field, but just under the overhang from the deck above. It was a great game, too. Playing the hapless Miami Marlins, the Braves won 11 – 6 in a game that featured a novice pitcher making his (very good) big league debut for the home team, and a lot of hitting by them as well. The Braves slammed 19 hits, including three home runs. All that action made it a thoroughly enjoyable game for the crowd watching.
The next morning we had tickets for the 10:30 a.m. tour of SunTrust Park. Although it was raining heavily again when we got up, by the time we set out, it had mostly stopped. At $20 per person, the tour sounds expensive, but it was worth every penny. We got to see a lot of places the public doesn’t generally get to go, the press box, private suites,
View of the field from the press box!
several private lounge areas, the utility tunnel, and finally out onto the field (Stay on the warning track, we were warned. Do NOT step on the grass!) and into the home team dugout, with visits to the Braves’ Hall of Fame, the Henry Aaron lounge, and the ChopHouse along the way as well. (HINT: If it’s a game day, go in the morning. They don’t do the field and dugout visits in the afternoons of game days.)
We had lunch and did a bit more exploration of the Battery area and a few shops until the rain started in earnest again. We retreated to the hotel for a rest until closer to time for that evening’s game. By an hour before the scheduled start time it was still raining in torrents. We had a good meal in the ChopHouse, watching the rain fall on the field, spent time revisiting the Braves’ Hall of Fame, stopping for a drink, wandering the concourses, and watching some of the entertainment there, until, at nine o’clock, they finally announced the game would have to be postponed.
Sigh. But anyway…
Husband and I posing with the life-size (sort of) bobblehead of Henry Aaron in the Hank Aaron loun
The Braves’ Hall of Fame is built into part of the stadium and is very nicely done with multiple displays covering the team’s history. Of course, the centerpiece of the whole thing is their most legendary player and an undoubted baseball treasure, Henry “Hank” Aaron, the man who broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record. (He is still an employee of the organization, by the way.)
Personal Trivia Note: We made a foray to Atlanta many years ago, (mid 1970s — so it was many, many years ago!) and were good fortunate to be present when Hank Aaron hit home run number 699.
But anyway…
1995 World Series Trophy
We’ve been Braves fans for a long time, so it was fun to see pictures of players from the 80s and the incredible group responsible for the run of ten consecutive (or something like that) National League Championships. We also had the privilege of seeing Greg Maddux pitch in the late 1990s, a two-hour and 40-minute game where he gave up one hit and the Braves won 1-0. We agonized over several World Series and rejoice when they won in 1995. It was wonderful to see the actual World Series trophy on display there, along with so many other artifacts from the Braves’ storied franchise history.
The next morning we headed back to North Carolina, once again negotiating the highways around Atlanta in the pouring rain. Even though we didn’t get the second ball game we’d hoped for it, we still voted the trip worth the effort.
The home team dugout! We got to sit on the bench where players and coaches sit during a game.
Wizard’s Bridge on Sale!
Beginning today and running through August 31st, BelleBridge Books/ImaJinn Books is putting the ebook version of my Epic Ebook Award-winning fantasy novel, Wizard’s Bridge on sale for only 99 cents!
Her fellow wizard is not the man she expects . . .
When invasion by a coalition of unfriendly neighbors threatens her home town, Alsa knows the seed of their salvation lies within her. But her talent for wizardry won’t help them unless she can learn how to use and control it, so she goes to the local wizard, who lives in a castle high on the side of a mountain.
To reach his home, she must brave a bridge that appears to be made solely of light and the wizard’s ferocious guard dragon. Neither the bridge nor the dragon is exactly what it seems. But then Alsa finds that a lot of things on the wizard’s mountain are not what she expects, including the wizard.
The bargain she has to make with him to get the lessons she needs shocks her and the training itself bears no resemblance to what she anticipated. Alsa has a lot of adapting to do and not much time for it. It will take every bit of her intelligence, courage, and compassion to master the magic, her home’s enemies, the dragon, and even the wizard himself.
Read an excerpt here or on the Amazon site using the “Look Inside” feature.
Getting Real with Crime Fiction – a Panel Discussion from Mystery in the Midlands
The Getting Real in Crime Fiction Panel
This was the first panel discussion on the schedule for the Mystery in the Midlands conference, happening right after the breakout sessions. The panel consisted of Lynn Hesse, Brian Thiem, Roger Johns, and Paul A. Barra, with Lynn Chandler-Willis moderating. Two of the group are former police officers, one is a lawyer, and one ex-military.
Some of the points they made:
One of the former police officers said, “Heck, yes, I make things up!” He noted that in fiction the detective gets to solve every case and get the girl as well, something that was rarely true in real life. They didn’t solve every case. They generally worked on many cases at a time and some had to be shelved when time and leads ran out. Day to day investigations can be chaotic and random. Fiction imposes structure on events that rarely have any.
All of the panelists acknowledged that events from their jobs, and people met in the course of them, played into the stories they wrote. As one said, “Things—ideas, details—bubble up from life experiences.” An author can’t help bringing what they’ve done and seen into stories.
They don’t base characters directly on people they’ve met in the course of the job, but bits and pieces of their acquaintances may show up in their cast.
Authors often create situations that are too over-the-top. While they certainly had some odd and unusual experiences in their careers, most cases are fairly routine. They did not get involved in shoot-outs with bad guys on a day-to-day basis, or even on a month-to-month or year-to-year basis.
Law enforcement officers are human beings, too. They’re not always perfect. Some are better than others, but all make mistakes.
And finally they mentioned that most of the gritty reality of law enforcement and legal work gets left out of fiction, sometimes to its detriment. More authenticity around the procedures and the paperwork that fill up the day could add richness and depth to many stories.