On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
A simple but powerful message:
I’m happy to welcome Soul Mate author Carole Ann Moleti. Today, Carole shares the three novels in the Unfinished Business series.
Here’s Carole!
It’s hard to believe that the Unfinished Business series turns seven this year! My family has vacationed on Cape Cod for as long as I can remember. One year, as I was pulling dustcovers off furniture and vacuuming up dead flies while opening up a summer cottage, I had the sudden inspiration to write a story about a woman who finds an old trunk in the attic and is transfixed by the clothes she finds inside.
I spent much of that July 4 weekend writing 13,000 words of what would become The Widow’s Walk and thought the short story was done. But my critique partners wanted to know what came before that. After I wrote 23,000 more words (Breakwater Beach), they wanted to know what came after, which was Storm Watch.
Thankfully, Debbie Gilbert of Soulmate Publishing loved the concept and published The Widow’s Walk in 2014, Breakwater Beach in 2016, and finally Storm Watch in 2017. This paranormal, ghost story series follows the parallel lives of the characters.
In 2018, my family bought a cottage just steps from Paine’s Creek Beach in the historic sea captain’s town of Brewster, Massachusetts where much of the action in the novels takes place. I had been celebrating the series with an annual “beach reads” bookstore/library tour on Cape Cod until the pandemic hit, but Debbie has just renewed the contract for The Widow’s Walk so I’ve got a few more years left to continue the celebration.
The Widow’s Walk: Book Two
Was getting out, getting away, enough?
Mike and Liz Keeny are newlyweds, new parents, and the proprietors of the Barrett Inn, an 1875 Victorian on Cape Cod, which just happens to be haunted. By their own ghosts. The Inn had become an annex of Purgatory, putting Mike, Liz, and their infant son in danger. Selling the historic seaside bed and breakfast was the only answer, one that Liz and her own tortured specter refused to consider. Were they doomed to follow the same path that led to disaster in their previous lives?
An excerpt from The Widow’s Walk: Book Two in the Unfinished Business
Silk rustled as she ran her hands over the dress. The lavender scent deepened as Elisabeth swirled around inside, Her mind went numb as the ghost took control. She slipped out of her clothes and stood naked in front of the mirror. She put up her hair, preening for her husband, before she stepped into the middle of the deep green skirts and pulled them up over her waist, slipped her arms into the sleeves, and twisted them behind her back to fasten the buttons. She used the buttonhook to do up the shoes, then peered out into the hallway.
Liz bundled the sweat suit into her arms, along with the soap and paper goods, and hurried to the attic door. It wasn’t until she placed her hand on the banister and started up the steep staircase to the roof that Elisabeth’s needling eased. Like an addict in the throes of withdrawal, just the promise of being up there, her spirit communing with the long lost sea captain, offered relief.
Breakwater Beach: Book One
Would you take a second chance?
Liz Levine is convinced her recently deceased husband is engineering the sequence of events that propels her into a new life. But it’s sea captain Edward Barrett, the husband that died over a century ago, who has returned to complete their unfinished business. Edward’s lingering presence complicates all her plans and jeopardizes a new relationship that reawakens her passion for life and love. What are Captain Barrett’s plans for his wife, and for the man who is the new object of her affections?
Storm Watch: Book Three
One last chance, their only choice.
Mike and Liz thought they’d gotten control of the specters haunting the Barrett Inn. But things get very complicated when they’re the ghosts from your past life. The Category Five Hurricane bearing down on Cape Cod appears to be headed directly for them–or has it been spawned from inside them? Knowing it’s their last chance to end the hauntings, they face an impossible choice. Will they survive the storm?
Author Bio
Carole Ann Moleti lives and works as a nurse-midwife in New York City, thus explaining her fascination with all things paranormal, urban fantasy, and space opera. Her nonfiction focuses on health care, politics, and women’s issues. But her first love is writing science fiction and fantasy because walking through walls is less painful than running into them.
Carole’s Cape Cod paranormal Unfinished Business Series novels have been published by Soulmate. He short stories have been featured in several of the Ten Tales fantasy anthologies, and her darker fiction has appeared in the Hell’s Kitties, Hell’s Heart and Hell’s Mall anthologies.
She won the Oasis Journal 2009 Prize for best nonfiction, and two timely pieces of her memoir have been published in the acclaimed Shifts and Impact anthologies.
Where to Find Carole…
Newsletter | Facebook | Amazon Author Page | Twitter | Website | Goodreads | Pinterest
I’m happy to welcome back award-winning author Caroline Warfield. Today, shares interesting facts about the setting of her new release, The Price of Glory.
Here’s Caroline!
I am an avid traveler, and the places I visit often turn up as settings for my novels. The Price of Glory, my newest work which will launch on July 7, is set in Egypt and Nubia, what is now northern Sudan. I have, alas, visited neither one. This time I had to rely on my imagination. I’m left with a longing to go there. Here is my list of ten things I wish I could see or experience that appear in the novel:
1.The Karnak Temple complex near Luxor, particularly the Great Hypostyle Hall that awed my hero. I also want to see the obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut. My hero reads the inscription to the heroine. By moonlight. That would be perfect, but I’ll settle for daytime.
2. Dahabiyas, traditional Egyptian sailing boats, with their graceful triangular sails, on the Nile. They come in many sizes, and I fell in love with paintings and photos. I would love to travel from Cairo to Khartoum on one, but I think maybe that is no longer possible.
3. The ruined pyramids at Meroë at sunrise, possibly from a tourist camp.
4. The place where the Blue Nile meets the White.
5. The rock-cut temples of Abu Simbel, even though they have been relocated due to the building of the Aswan Dam. They are now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site called the Nubian Monuments along with the Temple of Isis at Philae. My hero laments the damage being done by Western pillaging. It is good do know this treasure was saved.
6. Cairo’s souk, Khan el-Khalili. It is no doubt a tourist trap today, but then, it probably was bit of one in 1839 when my hero scoured the back lanes looking for genuine artifacts, particularly anything from Meroë.
7. The camel market at Khartoum. The book includes a flight across the desert with a camel caravan. I’m not so sure I want to try that.
8. A fishing village along the Red Sea.
9. The historic Islamic quarter of Cairo. It is always hard to picture how a place looked 180 years ago, but I would give it a try.
10. Shepheard’s Hotel des Anglais in Cairo. Alas it is gone. It burned down during anti-British riots in 1952 after 120 years of catering to Western adventurers.
I might find time for the great pyramids and the sphinx, but I suspect a view from a distance would suit me fine. I have a weakness for museums, however, so I am certain that, if I’m ever so fortunate as to make this trip, I would spend hours in the as yet unopened Grand Egyptian Museum (also called the Giza Museum). Delayed by Covid and other challenges it will be the largest archaeological museum in the world when open. I won’t miss the National Museum of Sudan either. It houses a comprehensive Nubian archaeological collection, including artifacts from Meroë.
About the Book
The Price of Glory tells the story of one man’s pursuit of knowledge that will bring him fame and respect, only to find it upended by a woman determined to serve the people of Egypt. Neither has any idea where this journey will take them when they embark down the Nile toward Nubia and its mysteries, ancient and modern.
Richard Mallet comes to Egypt with dreams of academic glory. He will be the one to unravel the secrets of the ancient Kushite language. Armed with license to dig, he sets out for Meroë, where the Blue Nile meets the White. He has no room in his life for dalliance or entanglements, and he certainly doesn’t expect to face insurrection and unrest.
Analiese Cloutier seeks no glory—only the eradication of disease among the Egyptian women and children of Khartoum. She has no interest whatsoever in romantic nonsense and will not allow notions about a lady’s proper role to interfere with her work. She doesn’t expect to have that work manipulated for political purposes.
Neither expects to be enchanted by the amorous power of moonlight in the ruins of Karnak, or to be forced to marry before they can escape revolution. Will their flight north take them safely to Cairo? If it does, can they build something real out of their shattered dreams?
***Available on Kindle Unlimited or for purchase here***
About the Author
Award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.
Where to find Caroline…
Website | Facebook | Newsletter | Goodreads | BookBub
I was surprised and a bit disappointed to discover that I was unfamiliar with the latest dating lexicon.
In a recent interview on Cityline, celebrity matchmaker Carmelia Ray shared the following buzzwords and dating trends of 2021:
Sneating
Going on a dinner date with someone purely for the free food. (a.k.a. sneak eating)
Continue reading on the Soul Mate Authors blog
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
Here’s one of my favorite reflections from international speaker and bestselling author Joyce Meyer:
I once heard the story of a little boy attending church with his mother, and he kept standing up at the wrong times. His mother repeatedly told him to sit down, and finally she got pretty harsh with him about it, telling him emphatically, “Sit down now, or you’ll be in trouble when we get home!”
The little boy looked at her and said, “I’ll sit down, but I’m still going to be standing up on the inside.”
Standing up on the inside doesn’t mean being rebellious or having an angry attitude toward those who don’t understand us. It means having a quiet, inner confidence that takes us through to the finish line. Confidence means knowing that despite what is happening outside, everything is going to be all right because God is with you, and when He is present, nothing is impossible.
Source: Trusting God Day By Day – Joyce Meyer – pp. 410-411
I’m happy to welcome multi-published author S. R. Cronin. Today, Sherrie shares her new release, She’s the One Who Gets in Fights.
Blurb
Do you know what your problem is?
Sulphur knows hers. This 13th-century woman has trained as a fighter all her life in hopes of joining the army. Then, within days, both of her older sisters announce plans and suddenly Sulphur is expected to find a man to marry instead.
Is it her good fortune her homeland is gripped by fear of a pending invasion and the army now goes door to door encouraging recruits? Sulphur thinks it is. But once she’s forced to kill in a small skirmish, she’s ready to rethink her career decision. Too bad it’s too late. The invasion is coming, and Ilari needs every good soldier it has.
Once Sulphur learns Ilari’s army has made the strategic decision to not defend certain parts of the realm, including the one where her family lives, she has to re-evaluate her loyalty. Is it with the military she’s always admired? Or is it with her sisters, who are hatching a plan to defend their homeland with magic?
The problem with being a woman who fights for what’s right is that now, she has to figure out what is.
(The War Stories of the Seven Troublesome Sisters consists of seven short companion novels. Each tells the personal story and perspective of one of seven radically different sisters in the 1200s as they prepare for an invasion of their realm. While these historical fantasy/alternate history books can be enjoyed as stand-alone novels, together they tell the full story of how Ilari survived.)
Excerpt
I hoped Davor would return soon, but he didn’t. Weren’t there arrangements to be made for the wedding? For their life together afterward? Didn’t he want to spend time with his betrothed?
When I asked Coral about his absence, she turned serious and changed the subject.
“You must know about this military threat that looms over Ilari.”
I did. For nearly a year now, rumors had circulated about a horde of invaders coming from the mountains to the east. Word was they fought from horseback, swarming into places and taking over before the surprised victims could gather their weapons.
Some said they only wanted tribute, taking a small amount of farmed goods to supplement the bleak diet provided by their own cold mountains. Others said they demanded a near slavery that no realm should tolerate. Some reported these invaders burned everything to the ground, indiscriminately killing the helpless and harmless along with the soldiers.
The lack of consistent information had turned them into a frightening monster of mythical proportions. Yet, the reports all agreed on one point. They moved further westward every winter and soon we’d be in their path.
“Yes. I know of the Mongol threat. Ilari could face a tough challenge this coming winter or next.”
“The Svadlu especially,” she said. “They already take this quite seriously.”
“As well they should.”
I considered this threat to be an added incentive for joining soon. If I got trained and put into a fighting unit, I’d have a chance to help Ilari.
“Davor is a key part of this effort.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He’s been tasked with training the soldiers to meet this challenge. It’s why he can’t leave Pilk now, with so much happening.”
Well, this did make sense. I had no idea my hopeful sponsor bore such a responsibility.
“When will you see him again?”
I noticed the sadness on Coral’s face. Indeed, being the wife of a soldier was no easy thing.
“Probably not until the wedding.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.” I meant it for her, of course. This should have been a happier time in her life but to be honest, I was sad for me as well, knowing I had nearly an eighth to wait before I could ask this stranger the question on which my entire life hinged.
Then, I saw the advantages of asking for an important favor around such an auspicious time. Doubtless Davor would be at his happiest and eager to please his new wife’s family. Maybe it was lucky I hadn’t had the opportunity to ask sooner. I couldn’t imagine a groom saying no to such a reasonable request from a new sister-in-law.
Buy Links
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Smashwords
Author Bio and Links
Sherrie Cronin is the author of a collection of six speculative fiction novels known as 46. Ascending and is now in the process of publishing a historical fantasy series called The War Stories of the Seven Troublesome Sisters. A quick look at the synopses of her books makes it obvious she is fascinated by people achieving the astonishing by developing abilities they barely knew they had.
She’s made a lot of stops along the way to writing these novels. She’s lived in seven cities, visited forty-six countries, and worked as a waitress, technical writer, and geophysicist. Now she answers a hot-line. Along the way, she’s lost several cats but acquired a husband who still loves her and three kids who’ve grown up just fine, both despite how eccentric she is.
All her life she has wanted to either tell these kinds of stories or be Chief Science Officer on the Starship Enterprise. She now lives and writes in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she admits to occasionally checking her phone for a message from Captain Picard, just in case.
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon | Author Blog | Book Series Blog
Giveaway
S. R. Cronin will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Find out more here.
Follow Sherrie on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.
How to Stop Holding On When You Should Let Go
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
A longtime fan of bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff, I look forward to receiving their daily emails. Here’s a thought-provoking excerpt from a recent message:
So how can we stop holding on?
By realizing that there’s nothing to hold on to in the first place.
Most of the things we desperately try to hold on to, as if they’re real, solid, everlasting fixtures in our lives, aren’t really there. Or if they are there in some form, they’re changing, fluid, impermanent, or simply imagined in our minds.
Life gets a lot easier to deal with when we understand this.
Imagine you’re blindfolded and treading water in the center of a large swimming pool, and you’re struggling desperately to grab the edge of the pool that you think is nearby, but really it’s not—it’s far away. Trying to grab that imaginary edge is stressing you out, and tiring you out, as you splash around aimlessly trying to holding on to something that isn’t there.
Now imagine you pause, take a deep breath, and realize that there’s nothing nearby to hold on to. Just water around you. You can continue to struggle with grabbing at something that doesn’t exist… or you can accept that there’s only water around you, and relax, and float.
This is the process of letting GO. It can be liberating.
Truth be told, inner peace begins the moment you take a new breath and choose not to allow an uncontrollable circumstance to dominate you in the present. You are not what happened to you. You are what you choose to become in this moment. Let go, breathe, and begin…
Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Marc & Angel’s website.
I’m happy to welcome authors Lauren Sevier and A. Smith. Today, they share interesting tidbits about The Fool’s Adventure World and their new release,
Guns & Smoke.
10 Interesting Things About The Fool’s Adventure World
1. The Fool’s Adventure series takes place in a dystopian America. The Culling, a nuclear holocaust, devastated every major country in the world. When the first bombs dropped on the United States Congress and the White House, a wave of nuclear bombs were dropped all over the world. While Guns & Smoke takes place in what remains of the American southwest, there are many, many places that we intend to explore in this world in this series and others.
2. After the Culling, social issues such as racial discrimination and sexual orientation were no longer as important. When the key focus of a population is surviving, everything else just sort of falls to the wayside. It was incredibly important to us to show the diversity of The Fool’s Adventure world from all sides. We live in a diverse world. It doesn’t make sense to not have characters who are people of color or characters that are a part of the LGBTQ+ community. It’s even more normal in this world than it is in modern America.
3. A lot of things we consider normal are hot commodities in The Fool’s Adventure world. Because of the changing climate as a result of the nuclear bombs, coffee beans only grow in the humid climates of the Borderlands. Chocolate is something only the very rich can afford. Forget about having new clothes or fresh, organic food. Typically, you take what you can get and you’re happy with it, because it means another day of surviving instead of starving in the street.
4. Gangs reign supreme. When the government was destroyed and no one else stepped up to seize power, small factions of men and women came together to take control. Some of the more popular gangs are The Hanged Men, The Crimson Fist, and The Black Judges. Others don’t have official names, but utilize symbols to strike fear in the hearts of men.
5. Across the country, in the places that the nuclear bombs dropped, people began seeing strange creatures appear from within the crater sites. Some claim to have seen giant gator-dogs, great, snapping-lion-turtles or panther-scorpions. Our main characters in Guns & Smoke may even have a run in with one of their own crater beasts.
6. Glowroot is a nasty, spiny little plant that grows inside the crater sites beyond the fences. When it’s distilled, it has a faint phosphorescent glow and stains your lips blue. It is highly addictive, and one can find glowroot dens in their favorite cities.
7. There are eight rules to being an Outlaw:
○ Don’t fall in love.
○ Never go anywhere without telling your crew.
○ Keep your word. Outlaws may steal, lie, and cheat. But if you make a promise, you keep it.
○ Where there’s danger, listen to your commanding officer.
○ Never overstay your welcome.
○ Pay your debts.
○ No one gets left behind.
○ Know your weapons. If it’s supposed to keep you alive, you should know it inside and out.
8. Due to radiation, people who survived the Culling or have been affected by the radiation have suffered from physical deformities. They’re considered undesirable by the general population. It is rumored that they spread disease or bring trouble wherever they go. This could be, in large part, because they struggle for basic resources to survive, that they have had to possibly still or kill for basic necessities.
9. The fringes are those places around the edges. Burned out towns, small cities that never recovered after the Culling, where no one except for the undesirables or fugitives would live. It’s a hard place where resources are scarce. It’s even more “kill or be killed” here than the rest of the world. Usually marked with a white ‘X’ so that travelers know that it’s unsafe and to stay away.
10. Paper money lost all its meaning after the Culling. After plundering cities, homes, and other places for precious metals, a new system took place. Those metals were melted down and shaped into bits. There are brass, copper, silver, and gold. Gold bits are incredibly rare and worth a lot of money. Along with bits, they also utilize the barter system, and negotiate for things that can be traded instead of paid for.
ADDITIONAL FUN FACT
Today is Lauren Sevier’s Birthday!!!!! She’s a brilliant co-author and friend and we want to wish her a great next year.
Blurb
In a world where safety is a luxury and honor is found only among outlaws, two people attempt to outrun danger lurking around each corner and the tragedies that define them.
Bonnie is an outlaw on the run. Beautiful but dangerous; her dark past stalks her like the crater beasts that roam the desert. As the notoriously cruel outlaw Jones sends his henchmen to track her down and retrieve the gun she stole from him, Bonnie hopes she can stay one step ahead. Because if he catches her, a fate worse than death awaits.
Jesse always dreamed of leaving the farm to explore the ruins of the big cities. He just never imagined he’d be forced to flee after strange men burned down his rural mountain town and murdered everyone he loved. Responsible for his kid brother and searching for an uncle he’s never met before, he isn’t sure he can navigate the perils of life among con artists and thieves long enough to find him.
Their two paths collide as they find themselves thrown together on the adventure of a lifetime.
Together, they may just discover that life is about more than just surviving.
Excerpt
“I didn’t mean what I said earlier, about turning you over to Sixgun. I was just…” He struggled for the words.
“Hurt?” I offered, and he nodded. “I know. I have a talent for pushing people away.”
“I still shouldn’t have said it,” he muttered near my ear, his arm tightening around my shoulders to hold me closer.
“Do you really think I’m stupid?” I asked.
“No, I think you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met,” he said, with all the conviction with which he said everything else. I smiled against his shirt. “Did you really climb into my bed because you thought I was upset about the train?”
“No,” I croaked, hiding my face as best I could. “I don’t have nightmares when you hold me.”
“I don’t have nightmares when I hold you either,” he admitted.
So I let him. I let him hold me all night. We didn’t speak, we just leaned against each other until the sky began to lighten and the shadows of our pasts seemed to fade into the distance.
Author Bios and Links
Lauren Sevier & A. Smith are long time friends and co-authors from southern Louisiana. Guns & Smoke, their first joint publication, began as a “short” story after having too much wine on girl’s night. Nine years later it is now the first novel in a Dystopian/Western Romance series. The duo has plans to publish several series together in the future. A. Smith spends her time with her two rescue dogs and rescue cat surrounding herself with books and Labyrinth paraphernalia. Lauren Sevier collects antique tea cups and tries to stay sane, though as the mother of a toddler she fails brilliantly most days. She also has a growing collection of crowns and tiaras and likes to act silly on TikTok. Look for more thrilling novels from The Fools Adventure series in the future!
Lauren Sevier
Website | YouTube | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Goodreads
A. Smith
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Newsletter | Goodreads
Giveaway
Lauren Sevier and A. Smith will be awarding a $20 Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.
Find out more here.
Follow the authors on the rest of their Goddess Fish tour here.
On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
While rereading The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron, I stopped to reflect upon this excerpt:
The “next right thing” is usually something small. It may be finishing the essay–or the paragraph. It may be returning the call. It may be doing the laundry. The next right thing is not usually glamorous–in fact, the opposite. The next right thing is usually mundane, and it is always doable. It also always gives us a sense of satisfaction.
How often have we fretted about a relationship for hours, when, in fact, what we need to do was finish the report we were working on? In avoiding the report, we are creating drama–setting up a situation where we will have to rush to get it done or make an excuse for ourselves tomorrow, triggering feelings of guilt and self-attack. We know when we are not doing the next right thing, because the actual next right thing is bugging us, pestering us, dancing around our consciousness, tapping at our psyche.
Doing the next right thing, especially when that thing is small, takes courage. Doing the next right thing when people around us are dramatic or threatening takes even more courage. When we display humility and take the honest next step for ourselves, we are always rewarded with a sense of true accomplishment. Sometimes, the “next right thing” is as simple as “go to sleep.”
Source: The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron, pp. 194-195
