October 27 Giveaway! Visit Me at The Fall Festival of Books

Want a chance at winning this lovely marcasite and sterling pendant? Visit me later today, Thursday, October 27, at the Fall Festival of Books Reader and Author Open House on Facebook. The party runs from 3 pm to 8 pm EST. (Even if you miss me there, my giveaway will be open for 24 hours, so you'll have plenty of time to enter!)

I'll also have a link to a free book I'm giving away today only.

Hope you'll join me!

Release Day! Spell Touched (Breens Mist Witches)

Would you dare to fall in love, if you knew you’d be dead by midnight...? 

I'm thrilled to announce that SPELL TOUCHED, the second title in my Breens Mist Witches series, is now available on Amazon, and is also free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers. It's been a long time coming and I'm in love with the world of Breens Mist, so expect plenty more in the series.

Here's the blurb: 

Gisela Marton doesn’t know what to make of the mysterious gift left on her doorstep, with its strange card that reads, Happy Death Day, Gisela! Everywhere she goes people she’s never seen before in the small town of Breens Mist, Oregon, wish her the same. Is this a tasteless joke meant to terrify, or a genuine threat?

Maddeningly calm, with a seductive grin that makes her hope this isn’t her last day on Earth, Sean MacLenna appears out of nowhere at the restaurant where she works to confirm the worst. She is going to die. At midnight. What Gisela and the other humans in town don’t know is they share it with a hidden society of witches, one that has protected the community for two hundred years. Every spell of protection woven comes with a price, however. In Gisela’s case that price is to sacrifice her life for the good of the town, and Sean, one of Breens Mist’s warlocks, is willing to risk everything to prevent that from happening.

Release Day for I LOOKED AWAY

Congrats to my fellow Written Fireside authors on the release of I Looked Away, a heartpounding romantic suspense novella written jointly by Lori Connelly, Elsa Winckler, Elise Forier Edie, Patricia Sands, Eve Devon, Bella Osborne, Kari Lemor, Jennifer Faye, Mandy Baggot, Jane Lark and me! I'm Part 3. Only 99 cents. If you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can get it for free!

What's Your Favorite Piece of Music to Use When Writing?

Writers get asked a lot, do you listen to music when you write? If so, do you use it to inspire your writing? Answering this question today, among others, in an interview on Leslie Ann Sartor's My Story, My Way ~ An Indie Adventure blog.

Hint: Yes, I do use music, mostly movie soundtracks. Whenever I start writing a new book, scene, or story, I'll cruise through YouTube, hunting for the perfect "sound" to match my vision for what I'm writing. Today, I'm working on the rewrite/expansion of Spell Touched (Breens Mist Witches) and have been listening to Florence and the Machine's Seven Devils, one of the few times I choose a piece of music with vocals.

I also love Enya's music and have a tendency to choose those of her songs that others have found inspiration in, as well. I've never seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies, nor read Tolkein's novels (his writing style puts me off for some reason), but those are the ones I tend to pick, too, Aniron and May It Be, among them. Hard to think of an Enya song that doesn't have a romantic spirit to it.

So writers, do you listen to music when you write? If you do, what's your go-to "theme song" to wake your creative muse?

Magical Weddings Now Available

Now available on Amazon, my novella, The Last Wedding at Drayhome (Breens Mist Witches) appears with 14 other fantastic wedding romances in Magical Weddings. So many talented authors in this set, which recently boosted many of us into the Top 100 Popular Paranormal Romance Authors rankings. (A super Woo-Hoo for that!) If you're a member of Kindle Unlimited, you'll be able to borrow the set through that program starting August 27th.

Be Mine, Marshal ~ Part 5

     

It's time for another round robin short romance from the authors of Written Fireside! This time the group is taking on a Valentine's Day western set in 1871 in the fictional pioneer town of Cold Spring, Idaho. If you haven't been following Be Mine, Marshal so far, you can catch up easily via the links below:

Part 1 by Lori Connelly
Part 2 by Paty Jager
Part 3 by Julie Lence
Part 4 by Susan Horsnell

As a public service announcement, I should warn you I've never written a western before (and probably never will again, considering how hard it was). My apologies in advance to my fellow writers. Hope I haven't messed things up too badly for you with this attempt. ;)

And now, picking up from Part 4 of Be Mine, Marshal...

      “Her name was Marigold,” Doc said. She struggled to recall the last name. “I can’t quite…Fisher! Marigold Fisher. Tragic situation. Just tragic. Her folks were killed by outlaws a while back.”

      “Here?” Fannie said, professing surprise. “In Cold Spring? When was this? I don’t remember hearing about any killings.”

      “They didn’t live in Cold Spring proper,” Doc said. “Had a farmstead, oh, ‘bout eight miles out, in the opposite direction from your granddad’s place, which is why you probably didn’t hear of it.”

      “What happened?” Daniel asked.

      “Well, let me see if I can recall the exact–”

      A tiny howl interrupted Doc Hartworth from the basket Daniel had brought inside and set at his feet. Once the first puppy started crying, all joined in, whining loudly.

      Ranger, who had come indoors with him, nosed the squirming, whimpering bundles of fur and then looked up at Daniel as if to say, aren’t you going to do anything about this?

      “When was the last time your Sophie nursed her pups?” Doc asked.

      “I don’t know, exactly,” Fannie said. “So much has happened. It would have to be before she was hurt, I think. Perhaps even before the fire?”

      “I’d say it’s about time then. Follow me,” Doc said. “Daniel? If you will?”

      The woman gestured at the puppies. Daniel answered his cue and hefted the basket to carry it where Miss Laurel-Anne directed.

      “I’ve got Sophie laying on my Taffy’s bed next to the stove.”

      “Doesn’t Taffy mind that someone’s taken her bed?”

      “She would, if the old dear hadn’t passed on a month ago.”

      “Oh!” Fannie said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. Please accept my condolences.”

      If Daniel thought it strange that Fannie treated Doc’s loss of a canine with the same gravity she would family, he didn’t show it. In fact, his green eyes softened in sympathy.

      Perhaps he understands how much the loss of companionship would devastate a woman of Doc’s age who has no husband or other relatives, Fannie thought.

      Whatever his reasons, the gentle expression with which he favored Doc Hartworth endeared Fannie to him.

      “Are you sure Sophie can do it?” Fannie asked. “Injured and all like she is?”

      “You tell me how else these little ones are going to get fed,” Doc said.

      “I see your point.”

      “Besides,” Doc said, “Sophie has been agitated since we finished sewing her up. I haven’t been able to get her to rest. She wants those pups.”

      Sure enough, Sophie fought to stand up when they entered the kitchen and she recognized the first desperate whimper.

      “You stay put, darlin’,” Daniel said to Sophie, as he held the basket for Fannie, and she reached in to retrieve the pups, placing them at her dog’s side, one by one.

      As soon as the first chubby little body latched onto a nipple and began to suckle, Sophie quieted, now willing to take it easy on the late Taffy’s plush bed.

      “Let’s make us some coffee and let her play mama to her young ‘uns,” Doc said. “And I’ll see what I can remember about the sad affair with Marigold’s parents.”

      Taking water from a pail, the woman poured it into a coffee pot, and added coffee, plus a couple of clean eggshells to settle the grounds. Then lifting up the stove lid on the left side of her cook-top, she jabbed at the embers inside, prodding them to life. She must have been in the midst of cooking supper when Fannie and Daniel arrived because Fannie could feel the heat from where Doc had invited her to sit at the table. It wasn’t long after the woman placed the pot on the closed lid, that the coffee began to boil.

      Doc fell quiet at first. Her fingers gravitated to the place where she might have once pinned a piece of jewelry to her shirtwaist. Fannie suspected she was thinking about her mother’s missing broach.

      “Doc?” Daniel prompted her. “You were going to tell us about Marigold Fisher and her family?”

      “Yes! Right! Of course. Marigold.”

      At once industrious, Doc set out three cups, one in front of each of them, poured coffee all around and plated some biscuits to go with them. She set these and a jam pot in the center of the table.

      “The parents were an ill-fated couple. The husband, Russell, had wealthy folks of his own from somewhere back east. I don’t rightly recall where, but they were flush. Annabelle, on the other hand, was dirt poor, the fourth, or maybe fifth daughter of some hardscrabble farmers down in one of our southern counties. When Russell’s family learned he wanted to marry Annabelle, they forbid it. Seems they planned to marry him off to some fine society miss. He did it anyhow, married Annabelle against their wishes. Russell’s father disowned him without a nickel. Whatever he had when they murdered he and his sweet wife, he’d earned or built himself, and I can tell you it wasn’t much. The children were always dressed one step up from rags.”

      “The murders, ma'am?” Daniel shepherded Doc back to the main reason for the story. “Who was responsible?”

      Doc seemed reluctant to answer. Instead, she took a biscuit off the plate, slathered it in jam and invited her guests to do the same. Fannie wasn’t hungry, but took one to be polite.

      “How were they killed?” Fannie tried a different question from the marshal’s.

      “Shot. Point blank while driving into town with a load of apples on their buckboard,” Doc said.

      “Witnesses?” Daniel said.

      “Just one. Marigold wasn’t with them, but her younger brother, Will, he was riding in the back. I think he was about 8-years-old then. He was sleeping under a blanket when his parents were stopped.”

      “What did he see?” Daniel asked.

      “Nothing. That was the problem,” Doc said. “He was too afraid to peep out from under the blanket and hid the whole time. Whoever killed his ma and pa, they never saw him and he didn’t see them. I don’t think he remembered much at all of what happened. He couldn’t even say how many of them there were that slaughtered his parents. When it was over and the poor little thing tried to wake dead Russell and Annabelle and failed, he left their bodies and the buckboard where they were and ran the rest of the way into town crying for help.”

      Doc paused to pour more coffee. Fannie still hadn’t taken a bite of her biscuit. Daniel frowned.

      “Why is this the first I’m hearing about this?” he asked.

      “You were in Cedar Camp,” Fannie stated the obvious. “Look at me. I live here and didn’t even know about it.”

      “Yes, but a crime like that, every lawman within a hundred miles should have gotten the news,” Daniel said and then asked. “What was done to find the men responsible? Did they find them?”

      He half-expected to be told vigilante justice was served and the town had strung up whichever party or parties they deemed guilty without a trial, but Doc doused that fear right away.

      “No one was caught that I know of,” she said.

      “Any suspects?”

      Doc shrugged. “None so I’ve heard.”

      “Are you telling me no one tried? No one even looked for the culprits?”

      “Don’t try to blame me,” Doc said. “I didn’t have any part of it.”

      “No, ma'am. I wasn’t,” Daniel said, barely holding onto his equanimity.

      That no one had even bothered to report the deaths—and that was the only conclusion he could draw given what he’d just heard—was not just callous, it bordered on irresponsible. The law should have been made aware at once that two, possibly three, dangerous criminals were on the loose in the area. Vandalism toward local merchants and tipping over outhouses was one thing, mischief at most, but cold-blooded murder was a whole other matter.

      “What happened to the two children?” Fannie asked. Being a teacher and dealing with young souls during the day, the fate of these two concerned her most. “Marigold and Will?”

      “Seems to me she had two brothers,” Doc said. “Not just Will. Another one older than her, but not by much, not grown. What was his name?” She tapped her temple repeatedly, as if that could dislodge the memory. “Lester! That’s right. He would be somewhere between hay and grass by now, maybe sixteen-years-old? Sort of a rebel. His ma and pa, God rest their souls, didn’t discipline him enough, if you ask me.”

      “Three then?” Daniel said, with emphasis. “And the girl, Marigold, has emerald green eyes?”

      “That’s right,” Doc said.

      “But you didn’t tell us, Doc,” Fannie said. “What happened to them, the children?”

      For the first time since she’d begun her tale, Doc appeared troubled.

      “You know, I’m not sure. I assume a relative took them in. Someone from Annabelle’s side of the family.”

      “But you don’t know that for certain,” Daniel said.

      “No.”

      “Who would know?”

      Doc shrugged and shook her head.

      Conversation around the table went cold, while Daniel worked through the puzzle in his mind, and Fannie started to wonder about something else.

      “What I want to know is why burn my granddad’s barn?” Fannie asked. “And why take a knife to Sophie?”

      “The barn I can’t give you an answer for yet,” Daniel said. “As far as Sophie goes, she was probably what they call in the lawyering trade collateral damage.”

      “I don’t like you referring to my dog as damaged,” Fannie said, offended.

      “What I mean,” Daniel said. “Is that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You said she liked to sleep in the barn. When whoever was there set it ablaze, her first instinct would have been–”

      “–to protect her pups,” Doc finished his sentence before he could.

      “Exactly,” Daniel said. “She probably started to raise a ruckus, the perpetrators didn’t want anyone to hear, and they tried to silence her, hence the slash across the throat.”

      “I’m going to kill them,” Fannie said.

      “No, you’re not,” Daniel said.

      “Says who? I have a rifle and I know how to use it.”

      “You leave the law keeping to me.”

      Fannie pointedly ignored his edict and changed the subject. “I don’t know how to pay you for what you’ve done for Sophie,” she told Doc.

      “Easy,” Doc said and looked over her shoulder at the charming tableau in the corner next to the stove. Sophie curled around her six offspring on Taffy’s bed, each puppy suckling from one of her teats, while Ranger lay on the floor in front of them, alert and on guard. “You see that roly-poly girl with one black ear? When she’s ready to let go of her mama, you give her to me. We’ll be even.”

      “Done,” Fanny said.

      “And Marshal, you bring me my mother’s broach.”

      “I promise I’ll try my best to find it and return it to you.”

      “Don’t try,” Doc said. “Do it. I want–”

      Gunfire outside on the street cut her off. Three shots came in quick succession, followed by unintelligible shouts and a woman’s scream.

      “What the–” Fannie began.

That's it for Part 5. To continue the story with Part 6, click over to A.J. Nuest's website on March 10!

            

I Looked Away ~ Part 3

Lori Connelly, the creator of Written Fireside, which puts out several fantastic free reads per year, has given those of us in the group an incredible challenge with our first ever story in the women's fiction category. 

Lori started us off with Part 1, centered around a frantic mother and her missing child.

Elsa Winckler continued the story with Part 2, adding to the drama. Here is my contribution, Part 3 of I Looked Away, a story in eleven parts by the writers of Written Fireside...


Like a rock the size of a boulder landing in Garrett’s stomach, the other ranger’s mention of little Noah Tucker made his gut clench. He didn’t want to be reminded of last year’s failure. His failure.

Not again. I’m not losing another. Damn. Why can’t parents do their jobs? Don’t they even care these days?

“I left her sitting at the picnic table over there,” the mother, Madeline Buell said, and pointed down the path.

“And why did you do that?”

“Like I told your colleague, Judy, I went back to fetch our jackets because of the rain.”

“Leaving her sitting alone over there.”

“She wanted to watch the ducks. She could see them from there.”

“At what time did you lose track of her?”

Madeline Buell frowned at him. It wasn’t the frown of an uncertain person trying to recall details. It was the frown of someone offended by his question and tone.

“The time,” she said. “You’re expecting me to have thought to check the time at the precise moment I noticed Megan gone? I was busy…looking.”

Her focus left him. He watched her gaze jump from spot to spot in the distance past his shoulder, never resting on any one thing. Garrett couldn’t read her. Was this the behavior of a young mother who was worried sick? Or did she have something to hide?

“I don’t know what time it was,” she said.

With those words, a near echo to those another woman had uttered, he was instantly thrown back to last summer.


“How long has Noah been gone, ma’am?” Garrett stood in the open doorway of the Tucker’s RV. 

It was a little after 11am on July 5th, a Monday. The Tuckers had rolled in on Friday evening, the 2nd, for the three-day holiday. According to park reservations, they were scheduled for departure that afternoon.

Natalie Tucker, Noah’s mother, had wedged herself up into one corner of the camper’s dinette. She was slender, in her late twenties. Her upper body hunched over into itself, while her legs stretched out across the dinette’s bench seat, crossed casually at the ankles. Going by her eyebrows, he guessed her to be a dishwater blonde, but black was her current color choice, the dull black of shoe polish in a tin. Stiff and brittle from over-processing, it had a life of its own. Red rimmed her eyes. They weren’t puffy from tears, just red. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t sound too upset. She didn’t sound much of anything.

“I don’t know what time it was when I saw him,” Natalie said. She didn’t look up at Garret, but instead picked at a hangnail, raising her thumb to her mouth to chew at it with her teeth. “Jordan?”

Jordan Tucker, the boy’s father, sat across from his wife at the dinette. Forearms resting leadenly on the tabletop, he looked ready to keel over in a face plant. “What?” he asked.

“He wants to know when we saw Noah last,” Natalie said.

Jordan was slow to respond and when he did, Garrett could see he had trouble formulating his answer. The man reached for it, but his recollections of the previous hours weren’t coming. “Next to the campfire? I don’t know. Maybe one o’clock? One-thirty?”

“One-thirty yesterday afternoon?” Garret said. He barely succeeded in clamping down on the incredulity he felt, preventing it from leaking into his voice. They hadn’t seen their child in close to 24 hours and were just now coming forward?

“One-thirty in the morning,” Jordan said absently, and then shook his head “No. Couldn’t have been that late.”

“No,” Natalie said. “Sometime around dinner I think?” The way she said dinner, it sounded like a guess, not about when she’d last noticed her son’s presence, but whether or not there had been dinner. “He was sitting by the fire, playing with it with a stick. I remember I….I looked away…at…at…” She shrugged. “It was just a minute, I think, and then I don’t remember what we did after that.” Her voice rose toward the end of her statement, making the sentence into a question. She looked up at Garrett at last. Was she expecting him to fill in the blanks for her?

Garrett could supply an answer easily. Their camper reeked of pot smoke. Were he to conduct a search of the vehicle right now, he wagered he’d find more than the odd recreational baggie of weed.

Jordan groaned loudly and his chin dipped closer to the tabletop. “Poor kid. Can you find him?”

“We’re organizing a search now,” Garrett told them.

“Do you need me…us to help?” Jordan asked.

“It’s best if you stay here, in case Noah comes back.”

“Okay.” Jordan pursed his lips and lifted an eyebrow. “Whatever you say.”

Garrett emerged from the RV grim in the knowledge he had no timeline to use as a starting point for the search. When had six-year-old Noah gone missing? Last evening, late last night, early this morning? He knew he wouldn’t be successful in pulling additional information out of the couple. Yes, he’d leave another ranger, Judy Willis, behind to go over it all with them again, but he didn’t kid himself. Jordan and Natalie Tucker had probably spent most of the weekend getting wasted.

He immediately assigned two rangers to organize ground search teams. He couldn’t contact the Forest Supervisor for a helicopter or other equipment until they had more to go on. Logically, there was only so far a six-year-old could wander, and it made sense to start with the easiest possible answers first, commonly used trails, public restrooms and—he shuddered—the river. He also dispatched teams to spread out through the campgrounds, talking to other campers who hadn’t already packed out for the weekend, asking if anyone had seen the boy and when.

Garrett did everything right. He pushed his people, but no harder than they pushed themselves. Vehicles exiting the park were stopped and drivers questioned, even more intensely when initial search parties turned up nothing and he and his teams feared Noah might have been abducted. An amber alert was issued. Water rescue covered the river. Hundreds of volunteers came out for the search.

Six hours, nine hours, working until darkness forced a halt to the search, they turned up squat. Not a single hint of Noah or what might have happened to him emerged. Their best shot at last known whereabouts had been the retired couple in the space next to the Tuckers who thought they might have seen him around the Tucker’s campfire at five-fifteen the evening before.

A full day passed. Garrett tried not to think about temps that had dipped into the twenties during the predawn hours. To their credit, none of the volunteers showed any signs of giving up on the second day; combing the forest well beyond the range even the most curious and determined child his age could have traveled.

Not once did the Tuckers stir from their RV. They couldn’t continue to use, not with Judy Willis and others watching, but sobered up they weren’t any more help. They remained curiously detached about Noah’s fate until it eventually sank in an arrest for child neglect was in their future.

Garrett couldn’t say if it was desperation or a hunch that prompted him to search the old logging trail at the far north end of the park. Just before sunset on the second day, he got in his truck, utterly frustrated with himself and the boy’s parents and drove eighteen miles over terrain only a dedicated off-roader could handle until he reached the trailhead.

Noah lay curled up at the base of a Douglas fir less than a hundred yards in. A stuffed toy, a tiger with its bright orange and black stripes, gave away the child's location. Noah, wearing only a tank top, shorts, and sneakers with no socks, lay curled around the animal as if sleeping peacefully. He wasn’t asleep. He’d died of exposure, no doubt during the early morning hours before light, when not even a helicopter would have been of assistance in locating him. How had the boy come to be here? Where had the stuffed animal come from? He already knew it didn’t belong to Noah.

He knelt next to the motionless form, touched the tiger’s face, traced a finger along that happy, childish grin and broke down, too exhausted to do anything but weep.


Yanking himself forcefully out of the past, Garrett studied Megan Buell’s mother, and wondered if he had another Natalie Tucker on his hands. Madeline's shoulder length honey blonde hair was fine and wispy, but it suited her equally delicate face. She appeared frazzled, not just worried, but permanently frazzled, and again, he received the impression she was hiding something. She was also livid with him.

“Look,” she said. “Believe anything you want about me. Call me anything you want. Irresponsible. A bad mother. I’m not who matters. Megan does. Find my baby!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Where is Megan? Will Garrett and Madeline find her in time? The incredibly talented Elise Forier Edie, author of The Devil in Midwinter, and contributor to the holiday-themed anthology, Krampusnacht, continues the story with Part 4 on her website. 

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