Blurb Blitz: Letters From Lucca

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

I’m happy to welcome award-winning author Kim Baccellia. Today, Kim Baccellia shares her new release, Letters from Lucca.

Blurb

On the heels of Sammi’s grandmother’s whispered deathbed wish, a package of letters from Italy arrives at her post box. Reading them makes Sammi recall whispers she heard in childhood of her grandmother’s wartime involvement, a past that Sammi’s father and aunt would rather see remain closed. As if things couldn’t get any worse, her long-time boyfriend, Hunter, dumps her. However, an opportunity arises that sends her to Italy to defend her grandmother, even if the truth might shatter all she believes. In a helpful twist, Joseph, her best friend’s Italian cousin, offers to help her. Despite the obvious growing attraction between Joseph and her, she tries to suppress it as she embarks on her mission to vindicate the grandmother she loves.

Excerpt

Sunny rays flitted through the partition blinds in Conte D’Alba’s Villa. The festive air and musical background, along with the tantalizing scents of limonada and sweets, competed with the heavy cigar fumes overhead. Many special guests attended the party. Dignities from afar and a few rich aristocrats cluttered the small foyer. Silk, diamonds, and custom-designed outfits with brilliant hues flitted around the more muted clothing of the friends. A few of the adults wrinkled their noses in disdain for Rosa. Rosa hung on the peripheral, waiting for a guest to say more about the battle in Africa, where her pappa fought. Only laughter, whispers, and scowls flew back. Rosa might have only been ten, but nervous energy drove her to tag on Pele’s hand. She had enough of the boring adults.

“Let’s go,” she urged.

Pele quickly grabbed a biscotti from the table, shoving it in his mouth. “What about Valerio?”

She shrugged. “He knows where we’ll be.” Though she tried to act indifferent, she snuck a furtive glance over her shoulder. Sure enough, their friend mingled with his father’s important friends. Valerio’s slick black hair and serious countenance made him look like a Conte in training, but Rosa knew better.

War.

The word tasted bitter with the fear-laced anxieties of her beloved Pappa, who fought alongside other courageous Italians. Rosa had hoped to hear more but doubted the vain Conte would reveal the status of her Pappa. Rosa bored of such adult talk.

Author Bio and Links

Award-winning author Kim Baccellia is the author of five fantasy/paranormal young adult novels, Crossed Out, Crossed Fire, No More Goddesses, Goddesses Can Wait, and Earrings of Ixtumea.

Kim has had many jobs. She was a bilingual teacher; homeschooled her son; served on her local RWA charter board; a Cybil’s panelist; and even read the slush pile for an agency.

In her free time, Kim loves long walks, yoga, watching psychological horror movies, and reading lots of books that she loves to review for YA Books Central.

A member of Women’s Fiction Writer’s organization, Kim is currently putting the finishing touches on a historical set in 1943 Italy. She also is working on a historical with a Utah suffragette loosely based on her own ancestor Lucy Clark. Kim lives in Southern California with her husband, son, and cockatiel Damon.

Website | Blog | Facebook | BlueSky | Instagram | Pinterest

Giveaway

Kim Baccellia will be awarding a $20 Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Find out more here.

Follow Kim on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.

Spotlight on Fire Between Two Skies

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

I’m happy to welcome multi-published author R.F. Whong. Today, Ms. Whong shares her new release, Fire Between Two Skies.

Blurb

Across centuries—power and peril—one fire endures.

Two eras. One relentless quest for truth amid desires and temptation. Across the centuries, two men are bound by parallel destinies that echo through time. Book 3 of this dual-time odyssey delves deep into the passions and struggles that connect their worlds.

In 2022 Hong Kong, Jason Guan, after losing his job as an assistant supervisor for wetland conservation, joins his uncle’s real-estate business. A chance meeting with his high school classmate, Vivian Jiang, draws him into a web of secrecy, seduction, and moral compromise. Amid the chaos, he and his wife, Debra, read an unpublished manuscript by her father, a celebrated writer, about the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851–1864) and a man’s futile pursuit of justice and peace on earth.

In nineteenth-century China, Zhang Xin, an orphan saved from the streets by Missionary Issachar Jacox Roberts, is swept into the fiery rebellion of the Taiping movement. Torn between the dream of a just kingdom, his forbidden love for Miao Lan, and his loyalty to his ruthless brother, Xin reckons with doubt, conscience, and the cost of faith.

When greed and exploitation eclipse justice, both men must navigate their respective perils. Will they prevail or be consumed?

At once a political thriller and a historical epic, this novel tracks the embers that survive every age.

Excerpt

Even in October, humidity seeped in. In the sea of pedestrians with face masks, Jason Guan trudged ahead. The city hadn’t been the same since the pandemic. Being a Realtor after he lost his job as an assistant supervisor for the Mai Po wetland conservation turned out to be tougher than he’d anticipated. The property market had become a temple. Some arrived to worship, others to offer sacrifices, while most lingered at the margins. The value of stability spiraled into abstraction.

He ducked into Le Jardin, a French café everyone Instagrammed. It had just reopened. Inside, the scent of baked croissants swirled around.

In the corner window, a woman sat, poised as if she were a sculpture poured into a tailored charcoal suit, all clean angles and an odd, quiet gravity. The hairs along Jason’s arms lifted. Instincts prickled. His mind skidded from face to memory to name while the rest of him stood there like an idiot. He stared too long. Time kinked. “Vivian Jiang?” The name scraped out before he knew it.

She looked up from her phone. Her jaw dropped. “Jason Guan?”

How many years had it been? Ten? Longer? He stepped forward.

Vivian stood, graceful and confident, but a tautness coiled behind that poise, as if she were ready to spring. He touched his chin. An old image from his high school days at the Methodist Academy flashed in his mind. Didn’t she always hide at the back of the class?

Author Bio and Links

From a young age, I cultivated a profound love of reading and writing. I would spend hours at the library, devouring every book on a single shelf before moving on to the next. It seems I have a longing that can’t be satisfied by reality. Immersing myself in literature allows me to escape into worlds where I could become someone graceful, witty, and popular.

Currently, I work for a small biotech company and have published 120+ scientific books and papers. As a latecomer to the world of creative writing, I’ve released several books under different pen names. R. F. Whong is the pen name used for publishing fiction titles, whereas Ruth Wuwong is the chosen name for non-fiction books. I’m delighted to share that I’ve been named a Featured Author by the Minnesota Anoka County Library in 2025 and by the Suffolk Virginia Authors Festival in 2026. One of my books, Echoes over Stormy Sea, won a few awards, including being chosen by readers as a winner in the 2025 HOLT Medallion Contest.

I’m married to my wonderful husband, a retired pastor who encourages me to pursue my dreams. We served together at three different churches from 1987 to 2020. Our adult son works in a nearby city.

Amazon | Goodreads | BookBub | Twitter/X | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Website | Tiktok | YouTube

Giveaway

R. F. Whong will be awarding a $25 Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Find out more here .
Follow the author on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here .

You Can Make Anything

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

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.

Bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert ends Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear with the following reflection:

Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred.

What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all.

We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits.

We are terrified, and we are brave.

Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege.

Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.

Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything.

So please calm down and get back to work, okay?

The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.

Source: Big Magic, p. 273

Start Being a Beginner Again

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

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 long-time fan of bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff, I look forward to reading their emails and blog posts. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post:

“Starting over is not an option!”

Unfortunately that’s a lie many of us hold on to until the bitter end.

The idea of starting over being a bad thing is baked right into the fabric of our society’s education system. We send our children to a university when they’re 17 or 18, and basically tell them to choose a career path they’ll be happy with for the next 40 years. “But what if I choose wrong?” I remember thinking to myself. And that’s exactly what I did, in more ways than one. Over the years, however, I’ve learned the truth through experience: you can change paths anytime you want to, and oftentimes it’s absolutely necessary that you do.

Yes, starting over and making substantial changes in your life is almost always feasible. It won’t be easy of course, but neither is being stuck with a lifelong career you naively chose when you were a teenager. And neither is holding on to something that’s not meant to be, or something that’s already long gone.

The truth is, no one wins a game of chess by only moving forward; sometimes you have to move backward to put yourself in a position to win. And this is a perfect metaphor for life. Sometimes when it feels like you’re running into one dead end after another, it’s actually a sign that you’re not on the right path. Maybe you were meant to hang a left back when you took a right, and that’s perfectly fine. Life gradually teaches us that U-turns are allowed. So turn around when you must! There’s a big difference between giving up and starting over in the right direction. And there are three little words that can release you from your past mistakes and regrets, and get you back on track. These words are: “From now on…”

So from now on what should you do?

Mix it up a little bit. Take one step at a time. Find ways to provide a healthy challenge to your current understanding of life, and you will discover and experience far more of life’s magic in the days ahead.

Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Marc & Angel’s website.

Joy and Sadness

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

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.

In a recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog, author Kathleen McCleary offered suggestions on how to weave joy and sadness into our stories. Here’s an excerpt from that post:

Every good story has to include both joy and sadness, but it’s the challenges, the losses, the disappointments, that make the most interesting reading, as Tolstoy pointed out. (“Every happy family is alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”) So if my suggestions here focus more on the dark side than the light, it’s because, for better or worse, that’s what drives good fiction. Consider:

The flip side of joy. Your character may be experiencing a moment of profound joy—a wedding, a coronation, the birth of a child, a retirement celebration. What else is going on? Major life milestones often involve loss as well as celebration—the loss of freedom or the road not taken or the hope for a different ending. And I don’t mean a character having reservations about a major life event (is this really the person I should marry?) as much as I mean a character’s experience of conflicting emotions at the same time (I love this person and am thrilled to be getting married, AND I want to howl with grief because my beloved father is not here).

Who or what is your character grieving? We don’t only grieve for the people we lose. We grieve the experiences we never had and maybe never will have. We grieve scenarios or lives we imagined for ourselves that suddenly bump into a reality that makes it clear those imagined lives will never happen. We grieve our own lost physical abilities or good looks or health. We grieve the loss of routines, the loss of place, the loss of the familiar. The first house I owned was next door to a five-acre forest, filled with towering Douglas Firs and hemlock and cedar trees, as well as dogwood, maples, and more. One year a developer bought that parcel of land and cut down every last tree, and believe me, I grieved the loss of those trees every time I looked out the window or stepped outside. Even in the midst of happy times, we can be suddenly rocketed back into feelings of loss.

How does your character experience joy and grief? Intense emotions are intensely personal Characters may react differently to happy events—the wedding that delights your protagonist may fill her sister with sadness, while the birth of a child may terrify a grandparent who once lost a child of their own. Similarly, if you and someone else are grieving the loss of a person dear to you both, your experiences of that person are different, and the ways you feel that loss will be different. Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet (now a movie) includes one of the most vivid, searing depictions of grief I’ve ever read. The different ways the characters grieve almost splits them apart, until one of the characters is able to see and feel the way the other has poured their grief into a different outlet, and come to a new understanding.

How will your character’s grief be revealed. over the arc of your story? Grief is an upheaval; it can lead to divorce, estrangement, reconciliation, passion. I recently finished reading The Correspondent, Virginia Evan’s surprise bestseller, which deals with a character’s intense sorrow over the loss of a child (this is not a spoiler; it’s part of the book throughout). But it’s only as the character grows and changes over the course of the book that she can fully come to terms with the real source of her sadness, and the ending is a surprise.

Read the rest of the post here.

Blurb Blitz: Undisciplined Catalyst

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

I’m happy to welcome back author Gail Koger. Today, Gail shares her new release, Undisciplined Catalyst.

Blurb

I was sixteen when I found out not only am I an alien hybrid, but monsters called the Tai-Kok were getting ready to invade our world. Guess who gets to stop them? Me! How?

My uncle, the mad scientist, created a machine called the portal that instantaneously sends a test subject from one location to another by converting them into energy. His idea is to port me onto a Tai-Kok ship. All I have to do is leave a bomb, hit the retrieval button on my spiffy traveler’s belt and poof! I’m back on Earth before the Tai-Kok ship goes kaboom. Sounds simple, right?

Wrong. Uncle Ben doesn’t have a clue where I’ll actually appear on the ship. It could be the engine room, the crew quarters, or even the bridge. It’s like playing Russian roulette. The Tai-Kok don’t like surprises or uninvited guests.

To make things even more fun, I have an alien battle commander stuck in my head and I’m related to a powerful Coletti warlord. Yippee. The chances of me living to see eighteen aren’t good.

Excerpt

“Give ‘em hell.” A wild look in his eyes, Uncle Ben tapped on the console.

The circles of light surrounded me, but this time it felt like a zillion fire ants were crawling over my body. Holy hell! Something had gone wrong! I appeared in midair and dropped like a rock. Smack! I slammed into someone, and my Glock went flying.

My eyes bugged. I was on the bridge of a futuristic warship, and the viewscreen showed one hell of a space battle going on. To make things even more fun, I was lying across the lap of a huge, muscle-bound male wearing black battle armor. Since he was sitting in the captain’s chair, I was assuming he was the boss.

A very angry-looking boss. I blinked. Holy cow was he good-looking, if you were into the whole merciless predator thing. Huh? The red chains woven into his black warrior’s braids matched the communication device on his left wrist. Who knew aliens accessorized and why did I care? I took a deep breath trying to control the panic streaking through me.

A low growl rumbled in his chest.

One look into his disturbingly hostile amber eyes and I knew I was in big trouble. I reached for my retrieval button.

His arms clamped around me painfully, and he spat a bunch of gobbledygook.

“Sorry, I don’t speak that language,” I replied mentally. Somehow, I knew he was psychic.

A harsh voice sounded in my head, “How did you get through our shields.”

“Dunno. My uncle is the scientific genius, not me. I’m just the delivery girl.”

“What do you deliver?”

Did I look stupid? The minute I told him bombs; he’d kill me. I pasted a friendly smile on my face. “Stuff. I’m Lexi and you are?”

“Battle Commander Kaelen. I serve Zarek the Coletti Overlord.”

Author Bio and Links

I was a 9-1-1 dispatcher for the Glendale Police Department and to keep from going totally bonkers – I mean people have no idea what a real emergency is. Take this for example: I answered, “9-1-1 emergency, what’s your emergency?” And this hysterical woman yelled, “My bird is in a tree.” Sometimes I really couldn’t help myself, so I said, “Birds have a tendency to do that, ma’am.” The woman screeched, “No! You don’t understand. My pet parakeet is in the tree. I’ve just got to get him down.” Like I said, not a clue. “I’m sorry ma’am but we don’t get birds out of trees.” The woman then cried, “But… What about my husband? He’s up there, too.” See what I had to deal with? To keep from hitting myself repeatedly in the head with my phone I took up writing.

Website | Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter/X | Amazon Buy Link

Giveaway

Gail Koger will award a $15 Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly selected winner. Find out more here.

Follow Gail on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.

Don’t Quit Too Soon

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

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 is a thought-provoking excerpt from Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear:

I think a lot of people quit pursuing creative lives because they’re scared of the word interesting. My favorite meditation teacher, Pema Chödrön, once said that the biggest problem she sees with people’s meditation practice is that they quit just when things are starting to get interesting. Which is to say, they quit as soon as things aren’t easy anymore, as soon as it gets painful, or boring, or agitating. They quit as soon as they see something in their minds that scares them or hurts them. So they miss the good part, the wild part, the transformative part—the part when you push past the difficulty and enter into some raw new unexplored universe within yourself.

And maybe it’s like that with every important aspect of your life. Whatever it is you are pursuing, whatever it is you are seeking, whatever it is you are creating, be careful not to quit too soon. As my friend, Pastor Rob Bell warns: Don’t rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the most capacity to transform you.”

Don’t let go of your courage the moment things stop being easy or rewarding.

Because that moment?

That’s the moment when interesting begins.

Source: Big Magic, p. 247

On a Lighter Note…

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

This month has been challenging, with colder-than-usual temperatures and ever-changing global dynamics. Against that backdrop, it was a delight to hear about a wee celebrity who is creating a stir in Montreal, Quebec.

Last week, Sabrina Jacob was taking out her garbage when she spotted a rare bird perched nearby—a European robin. A hearty little bird, it is native to Europe and can be found as far north as the Scandinavian countries.

After Sabrina shared pictures and videos online, word spread quickly. Bird enthusiasts from across Canada and the United States flocked to Montreal, hoping to catch glimpses of this visitor so far from home.

How did the bird end up in Canada?

According to bird behaviourist Joel Coutu, one possibility is that the bird fled harsh European cold fronts and somehow crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Another theory suggests it may have arrived during fall migration and has, until now, gone unnoticed, living among us for weeks or months.

Here’s one of Sabrina Jacob’s pictures: