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New Romance Novel — THE SWEETEST THING by Sasha Summers

The birds and the bees and longtime rivalries…

For Tansy Hill, nothing is sweeter than honey from her farm—except maybe revenge on the man whose father stole her family’s secret honey recipe years ago. Dane “The Viking” Knudson has been Tansy’s rival since childhood, and though he’s grown into a frustratingly handsome charmer, he’s also standing between her and the best honey award at the Honey Bee Festival, which Honey Hill Farms desperately needs to stay afloat.

Fanning the sparks that have forever flown between them, the competition is on. Sure, Tansy and Dane have plenty in common—more than they’ll admit—but Dane’s plans to expand Viking Honey are also on the line. When buried family secrets come to light, they’ll have to decide whether taking a chance on each other is worth risking the happiness they’ve been longing for.

THE SWEETEST THING
Author: Sasha Summers
ISBN: 9781335458544
Publication Date: June 28, 2022
Publisher: HQN Books

Buy Links:
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Powell’s

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

“He cannot be serious.” Tansy stared at the front page of the local Hill Country Gazette in horror. At the far too flattering picture of Dane Knudson. His long, pale blond hair pulled back in a sloppy man-bun—which should look ridiculous but, on him, never did. The skintight Texas Viking Honey T-shirt vacuum-sealed over what appeared to be a very Viking-like chest. And that smile. That smug, “that’s right I’m superhot and I know it” smile that set her teeth on edge. “What was he thinking?”

“He who?” Tansy’s sister Astrid, sat across the kitchen table, her lap occupied by Beeswax, their massive orange cat. “Who has poor Tansy-Wansy all worked up, hmm, Beeswax?” She smiled down at the cat, who was staring up at Astrid with pure adoration. “Maybe you should go cuddle with her.”

“Dane.” Tansy shook the newspaper. “Who else?”

“Who else, indeed?” Aunt Magnolia said. She stood, straight and tall and willowy, stacking fresh-from-the-oven lavender-honey lemon poppy seed muffins on a plate.

“What did he do now?” Aunt Camellia asked, looking and sounding the appropriate mix of outraged and sympathetic Tansy was hoping for. She wiped her hands on her apron before tightening the lid on the Mason jar full of her lavender-scented beeswax lotion.

“What did he do now?” Lord Byron, Aunt Camellia’s parrot, sat on his perch close to her chair waiting for one of the oyster crackers she always had tucked away in her pocket, just for him.

“This.” Tansy shook the newspaper again. “Texas Viking Honey to Help Honey, Texas, Develop Its As Yet Untapped Agri-Tourism Opportunity.” She paused, waiting for the reaction.

“This is bad?” Astrid asked, leaning around Beeswax to pick up her teacup. “Why is this bad? If they’re scaling back on honey, then—”

“‘While continuing to produce their award-winning clover honey,’” Tansy read, then snorted, “‘Texas Viking Honey, with the support of the Honey City Council, will be expanding operations and combining their Viking ancestry and Texas heritage—”

“That does sound rather impressive, Tansy.” Aunt Magnolia slid the plate of muffins onto the kitchen table and took her seat. “That doesn’t mean it is impressive.”

“Impressive? More like pompous.” Aunt Camellia took a muffin and joined them at the table. “All the Viking this and Viking that. That boy is pure Texan.” She devoured the muffin in a few angry bites.

“The Viking thing is a marketing gimmick,” Tansy agreed.

“A smart one.” Astrid winced at the glare Tansy shot her way. “What about this has you so worked up, Tansy?”

“I haven’t gotten there, yet.” Tansy held up one finger and continued clearly now, over-enunciating each syllable as she read, “‘Combining their Viking ancestry and Texas heritage for a one-of-a-kind event venue and riverfront cabins ready for nature-loving guests by next fall.’”

All at once, the room froze.

Finally. She watched as, one by one, they realized why this was a bad thing.

“But, the bees.” Astrid frowned. Beekeeping wasn’t just their family’s livelihood, it was their way of life. But Astrid had an extra connection to their winged friends. For her, it wasn’t about the honey or the beeswax or the money, it was about protecting them. There was one thing that made Astrid Hill upset—endangering the bees.

Two years of scorching heat and drought had left Honey Hill Farms’ apiaries in a precarious position. Not just the bees—the family farm itself. They all knew this season could make or break the Hill family. None of them wanted to say the words out loud, of course, but there was an inordinate amount of pressure to win the cash prize at this year’s Honey Festival—and the distribution contract with Healthy & Wholesome Markets. If they didn’t, they’d lose their home and their bees… Of course, Dane’s stupid plan might run off the bees long before then.

Astrid looked crestfallen. “It’s almost as if he doesn’t understand or…or care about the bees.”

“He doesn’t care about the bees.” Tansy wanted to hit something. Or someone. “If he did, this wouldn’t be happening.” She scanned the paper again—but not the photo. His smile only added insult to injury. “The noise and traffic and guests, and who knows what ‘event venue’ means? Before that, there will be construction and machinery and workers and…and destruction.” She shook her head. “What is he thinking?”

“I’ll tell you what he’s thinking.” Aunt Camellia took another muffin. “Come to think of it, he’s a Knudson, so chances are he’s not thinking… But, if he’s anything like his father, he’s determined to milk every cent he can out of every avenue available to him. This little…stunt will likely bring them a pretty penny.”

“Now, now, Camellia.” Aunt Magnolia held her hand out for the newspaper.

Tansy handed it over and exchanged a look with her sister. They didn’t know all the ins and outs of what had happened between Aunt Camellia and Harald Knudson—only that their aunt had zero tolerance for all things Knudson.

On that, she and Aunt Camellia were of one mind.

She and her aunt had spent the last eighteen months perfecting their newest honey to make absolutely certain they’d win top prize at this year’s Honey Festival. All the long hours and tweaking of flavors had led to the best honey Tansy had ever tasted—and she’d tasted a lot of honey in her lifetime. That was how Tansy knew, deep in her bones, they’d win. They’d win the blue ribbon and the cash prize and the Healthy & Wholesome Markets deal that would keep Honey Hill Farms alive and well for the long-term. But the cherry on top? Winning top honors would put the Knudsons in their place and avenge her aunt Camellia. Her aunt was bighearted and generous and kind to a fault. That Harald Knudson had done something to hurt her was enough to make the Hills and Knudsons business rivals. Thanks to Tansy’s incident with Dane, the rivalry was intensely personal for her. Up until ten minutes ago, she’d been on a sort of high just thinking about Harald Knudson’s shock as the Hill family took first place—not to mention how ecstatic she’d been imagining wiping the grin off Dane Knudson’s impossibly handsome and perpetually condescending face. Sweet victory.

But now…this…

Tansy stood and carried her coffee cup to the kitchen sink, leaning against the counter to clear her head. Her gaze bounced around the farmhouse kitchen, taking in Granna Hazel’s hand-painted bee and flower details on the pale yellow walls, Aunt Camellia’s leftover lotion materials atop the large island, and the dozen or so full jars sealed and lined up beneath the window over the sink. Aunt Camellia’s pups, all five of them, were a patchwork mass of fur, piled close in a long beam of sunlight that cut across the Spanish-tile kitchen floor. This room was the heart of the old house. This was where they gathered at least twice a day to share a meal, news, and work through any concerns together. Even with stacks of bee journals, magazines, books, baskets of honey, soap- and lotion-making supplies, and all sorts of bits and bobs tacked to the refrigerator and oversize corkboard by the pantry, it was impeccably clean. Aunt Camellia believed in organized chaos—that’s how she described it. Tansy sighed, peering out the window at the bluebonnets and golden agarita waving in the spring breeze, beckoning to the bees that called Honey Hill Farms their home.

A home Dane Knudson is jeopardizing…

“You have to give the boy credit,” Aunt Magnolia said, folding the newspaper and laying it on the table. “He has drive.”

Tansy wasn’t giving the boy a thing. As far back as she could remember, Tansy and Dane had gone toe-to-toe. From middle school spelling bees, fundraisers and Junior Beekeepers competitions, to two publicly humiliating and painful weeks in high school that forever cemented their mutual dislike of one another. She stopped that line of thought cold. Bottom line, they’d been each other’s fiercest competition. But it wasn’t the competition that irked her or the time and work she’d put in to besting him, it was Dane. He had been—he still was, this article proved that—heartless. Heartless and selfish. To him, life was a game, and toying with people’s emotions was all part of it. Over and over again, she’d invested time and energy and hours of hard work and he’d just sort of winged it. As far as Tansy knew, he’d never suffered any consequences for his lackluster efforts. No, the great Dane Knudson could charm his way through pretty much any situation. One thing was certain: Dane and his father were both rotten to the core.

“Drive? Or ego? Maybe he’s finally bitten off more than he can chew?” Tansy shook her head. “What he’s planning has nothing to do with beekeeping.” If anything, there was the potential for disaster. For all of them. And now this…this expansion of his could cost her family their home, the farm, the bees…everything. Tansy’s stomach knotted with dread.

“We should file a protest,” Aunt Camellia said, taking a third muffin.

“It’s his private property, Camellia.” Aunt Magnolia sipped her tea, one fine red eyebrow arching. “He can do as he pleases. Besides, it sounds like the city council is on board.”

Tansy didn’t want to think about just how charming he’d been to manage that. Ugh. She took one of the still-warm lavender-honey lemon poppy seed muffins and pulled it apart. The scent flooded her nostrils and made her stomach growl. Fluffy and golden, with just the faintest hint of their homegrown lavender-infused honey. She took a bite and moaned. “Oh, yum, Auntie Mags. These are heaven.”

“Of course, they are. I made them.” Magnolia smiled. “But mostly because it’s Granna Hazel’s recipe.” She winked.

Tansy spread on some of the honey butter she’d made the week before. Over the years, she learned how to balance rich flavors with a smooth-as-silk texture—making all Honey Hill honey butters spread perfectly. She took a bite, moaned again and smiled. “So, so good.”

“Why not go talk to him?” Astrid asked.

Tansy almost choked on her muffin. “Me?”

“Yes, you.” Astrid shot their aunt a look. “Aunt Camellia can’t.”

“I can’t and I won’t. I’m not setting foot on that man’s property.” Aunt Camellia nodded so vigorously that her reddish-blond curls shook. She crossed her arms over her ample bosom and leaned back against her chair, declaring, “And I won’t be responsible for my behavior if he ever dared show up here.” He meaning Dane’s ne’er-do-well father, Harald Knudson.

“Dared show up here,” Lord Byron repeated, the parrot bobbing up and down on his perch.

Aunt Camellia smiled at the parrot. “What do you have now?” she asked, retrieving the page of newspaper Lord Byron was standing on. The parrot was always taking things and hiding them away, but Aunt Camellia so adored him that he was rarely scolded—much to Aunt Magnolia’s disapproval. “Little thief,” Aunt Camellia all but cooed, then she fed him a cracker.

“I don’t think Harald Knudson would ever think about visiting Honey Hill Farm, Camellia.” Aunt Magnolia shrugged. “Which is good because we need to spend our money carefully, not bailing you out of jail. Your bird, however, could use some time locked up.” She glared at the parrot. Lord Byron glared right back.

Astrid shrugged. “You have to go, Tansy. I’d only make things ten times worse, and you know it.”

“I doubt that,” Tansy argued, though she knew what her sister meant. Astrid would go on a long diatribe about the welfare of the bees, how beekeeping was about equity and respect and balance, before she ever addressed the very real, very legitimate concerns this expansion could cause. A whole list of worries that included things like how vehicle exhaust fumes disrupted a bee’s scent signals, the necessity of an environmental study done prior to any construction—all to ensure no harm or disruption for the land, animals and bees…

Oh, how she loathed Dane Knudson—now more than ever.

He had to know that clearing or changing his property could cataclysmically alter the hives’ pollen source, didn’t he? Or that a queen would relocate her hive if she feared they were in danger? Or that bringing in people, people who didn’t understand bees or honey or anything about beekeeping, could stress a hive and impact their honey production or have them desert their home? A real beekeeper would carefully consider all of this, plus some, before considering such a…a scheme. Since Dane Knudson proclaimed to be a beekeeper, from a long line of beekeepers, he should know of this. He should know better.

“Aunt Magnolia shouldn’t go because she intimidates…well, everyone. That’s not exactly conducive to conversation.” Astrid shrugged, running a hand along Beeswax’s orange-striped back. “Sorry, Aunt Mags.”

Tansy couldn’t help but wonder if Dane Knudson didn’t need to be intimidated a little. Or a lot.

“Don’t be. I love being intimidating. It’s so…so powerful.” Aunt Magnolia smiled. “You can do the same, Tansy. Try it, you’ll like it. Put that brawny boy in his place.”

“Too bad Rosemary isn’t here.” Astrid sighed. “She’d have the perfect talking points for him, spout off just the right numbers and present it so matter-of-factly that he couldn’t argue.”

But their genius little sister, Rosemary, was off following her dreams and participating in a truly innovative bee genomics postgrad study in California. Too far away to call in for backup.

So apparently, Tansy was it. “Unlike Rosemary, the chances of me remaining matter-of-fact are slight.” Especially when I’m face-to-face with that self-inflated, condescending, ridiculously good-looking, unethical jerk.

“Tansy, darling, there is absolutely no reason to let him upset you so. Make your concerns known.” Aunt Magnolia sipped her tea. “Stay calm and cool. Keep the upper hand.”

“She’s right, Tansy. He’s the same bully he was in high school. Getting under your skin for fun,” Astrid reminded her. “But you’re older and wiser and you know how he works so he can’t get to you anymore.” She smiled, sort of. “Just remember what Auntie Mags said. Be intimidating.”

“They’re right, Tansy, darling.” Aunt Camellia patted her hand. “You can do it.”

“You can do it,” Lord Byron squawked.

Tansy didn’t miss the way both her aunts looked at her—Astrid, too. None of them appeared convinced that she could have a productive conversation with their Viking-ish neighbor. And that included herself. But if I don’t talk to Dane, then there’s no chance of stopping his idiotic plan. What choice did she have?

Excerpted from The Sweetest Thing by Sasha Summers. Copyright © 2022 by Sasha Summers. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

About the Author

USA Today Bestselling Author Sasha Summers writes stories that celebrate the ups and downs, loves and losses, ordinary and extraordinary occurrences of life. Sasha pens fiction in multiple genres and hopes each and every book will draw readers in and set them on an emotional and rewarding journey. With a puppy on her lap and her favorite Thor mug full of coffee, Sasha is currently working on her next release. She adores hearing from fans and invites you to visit her online.

Social Links:
Author Website: https://sashasummers.com/
Facebook: Sasha Summers, Author
Twitter: @sashawrites
Instagram: @sasha.summers
Goodreads

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New Historical Fiction — THE GERMAN WIFE by Kelly Rimmer

The enmity between two women from opposing sides of the war culminates in a shocking event as anti-German sentiment sweeps America, when the aristocratic wife of a German scientist must face the social isolation, hostility and violence leveled against her and her family when they’re forced to relocate to Alabama in the aftermath of WWII. For fans of Beatriz Wiliams, Pam Jenoff, and Kristin Harmel.

Berlin, 1934—Ilse Meyer is the aristocratic wife of a scientist whose post-WWI fortunes change for the better when her husband, Jurgen, is recruited for Hitler’s new rocket program. Although Ilse and Jurgen do not share the popular political views rising in Germany, Jurgen’s new job forces them to consider what they must sacrifice morally for their financial security. But too late they realize the Nazi’s plans to weaponize Jurgen’s technology as they begin to wage war against the rest of Europe.

Huntsville, Alabama, 1949—Jurgen is one of hundreds of Nazi scientists offered pardons and taken to the US to work for the CIA’s fledgling space program. Ilse, now the mother of four, misses Germany terribly and struggles to fit in among the other NASA wives, who look upon her with suspicion. In a moment of loneliness, she confesses to a neighbor, Rachel Carlson, about Jurgen’s membership in the SS and her resentment for being forced to live in a country that will always see her as the enemy. What she doesn’t know is that she has trusted the wrong neighbor.

When the scandalous news about the Meyer family’s affiliation with the Nazi party spreads, idle gossip turns to bitter rage, and the act of violence that results will tear apart a community and a family before the truth is finally revealed—but is it murder, revenge or justice?

The German Wife : A Novel
Kelly Rimmer
On Sale Date: June 28, 2022
9781525811432
Trade Paperback
$17.99 USD
464 pages

Buy Links:
Bookshop.org
Indiebound
Barnes and Noble
Amazon
Indigo

Excerpt

1

Sofie

Huntsville, Alabama 1950

“WAKE UP, GISELA,” I MURMURED, GENTLY SHAK­ing my daughter awake. “It’s time to see Papa.”

After the better part of a day on a stuffy, hot bus, I was so tired my eyes were burning, my skin gritty with dried sweat from head to toe. I had one sleeping child on my lap and the other leaning into me as she sprawled across the seat. After three long weeks of boats and trains and buses, my long jour­ney from Berlin to Alabama was finally at an end.

My youngest daughter had always been smaller than her peers, her body round and soft, with a head of auburn hair like mine, and my husband’s bright blue eyes. Over the last few months, a sudden growth spurt transformed her. She was now taller than me. The childhood softness had stretched right out of her, leaving her rail thin and lanky.

Gisela stirred, then slowly pushed herself to a sitting posi­tion. Her eyes scanned along the aisle of the bus as if she were reorienting herself. Finally, cautiously, she turned to look out the window.

“Mama. It really doesn’t look like much…”

We were driving down a wide main street lined with small stores and restaurants. So far, Huntsville looked about as I’d expected it would—neat, tidy…segregated.

Minnie’s Salon. Whites Only.

Seamstress for Colored.

Ada’s Café. The Best Pancakes in Town. Whites ONLY!

When I decided to make the journey to join my husband in America, segregation was one of a million worries I con­sciously put off for later. Now, faced with the stark reality of it, I dreaded the discussions I’d be having with my chil­dren once we had enough rest for productive conversation. They needed to understand exactly why those signs sent ice through my veins.

“Papa did tell us that this is a small town, remember?” I said gently. “There are only fifteen thousand people in Huntsville and it will be very different from Berlin, but we can build a good life here. And most importantly, we’ll be together again.”

“Not all of us,” Gisela muttered.

“No, not all of us,” I conceded quietly. Loss was like a shadow to me. Every now and again, I’d get distracted and I’d forget it was there. Then I’d turn around and feel the shock of it all over again. It was the same for my children, especially for Gisela. Every year of her life had been impacted by the horrors of war, or by grief and change.

I couldn’t dwell on that—not now. I was about to see my husband for the first time in almost five years and I was every bit as anxious as I was excited. I had second-guessed my deci­sion to join him in the United States a million or more times since I shepherded the children onto that first bus in Berlin, bound for the port in Hamburg where we boarded the cross-Atlantic steamship.

I looked down at my son. Felix woke when I shook his sis­ter, but was still sitting on my lap, pale and silent. He had a head of sandy curls and his father’s curious mind. Until now, they’d never been on the same continent.

The first thing I noticed was that Jürgen looked differ­ent. It was almost summer and warm out, but he was wear­ing a light blue suit with a white shirt and a dark blue bow tie. Back home, he never wore a suit that color and he never would have opted for a bow tie. And instead of his custom­ary silver-framed glasses, he was wearing a pair with thick black plastic frames. They were modern and suited him. Of course he had new glasses—five years had passed. Why was I so bothered by those frames?

I couldn’t blame him if he reinvented himself, but what if this new version of Jürgen didn’t love me, or was someone I couldn’t continue to love?

He took a step forward as we shuffled off the bus but didn’t even manage a second before Gisela ran to him and threw her arms around his neck.

“Treasure,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “You’ve grown up so much.”

There was a faint but noticeable American twang in his German words, which was as jarring as the new glasses.

Jürgen’s gaze settled on Felix, who was holding my hand with a grip so tight my fingers throbbed. I felt anxious for both children but I was scared for Felix. We’d moved halfway across the world to a country I feared would be wary of us at best, maybe even hostile toward us. For Gisela and me, a re­union with Jürgen was enough reason to take that risk. But Felix was nervous around strangers at the best of times, and he knew his father only through anecdotes and photographs.

“Felix,” Jürgen said, keeping one arm around Gisela as he started to walk toward us. I could see that he was trying to remain composed, but his eyes shone. “Son…”

Felix gave a whimper of alarm and hid behind my legs.

“Give him time,” I said quietly, reaching behind myself to touch Felix’s hair. “He’s tired and this is a lot to take in.”

“He looks just like—” Jürgen’s voice broke. I knew the struggle well. It hurt to name our grief, but it was important to do so anyway. Our son Georg should have been twenty years old, living out the best days of his life. Instead, he was another casualty of a war that the world would never make sense of. But I came to realize that Georg would always be a part of our family, and every time I found the strength to speak his name, he was brought to life, at least in my memories.

“I know,” I said. “Felix looks just like Georg.” It was fit­ting that I’d chosen Georg for Felix’s middle name, a nod to the brother he’d never know.

Jürgen raised his gaze to mine and I saw the depth of my grief reflected in his. No one would ever understand my loss like he did.

I realized that our years apart meant unfathomable changes in the world and in each of us, but my connection with Jürgen would never change. It already survived the impossible. At this thought, I rushed to close the distance between us.

Gisela was gently shuffled to the side and Jürgen’s arms were finally around me again. I thought I’d be dignified and cautious when we reunited, but the minute we touched, my eyes filled with tears as relief and joy washed over me in cas­cading waves.

I was on the wrong side of the world in a country I did not trust, but I was also back in Jürgen’s arms, and I was in­stantly at home.

“My God,” Jürgen whispered roughly, his body trembling against mine. “You are a sight for sore eyes, Sofie von Meyer Rhodes.”

“Promise me you’ll never let me go again.”

Jürgen was a scientist—endlessly literal, at least under nor­mal circumstances. Once upon a time, he’d have pointed out all the reasons why such a promise could not be made in good faith—but now his arms contracted around me and he whis­pered into my hair, “It would kill me to do so, Sofie. If there’s one thing I want for the rest of my life, it’s to spend every day of it with you.”

“Many of our neighbors are Germans—most have just ar­rived in Huntsville in the last few weeks or months, so you will all be settling in together. There’s a party for us tomor­row at the base where I work, so you’ll meet most of them then,” Jürgen told me as he drove us through the town in his sleek black 1949 Ford. He glanced at the children in the rear­view mirror, his expression one of wonder, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “You’ll like it here, I promise.”

We’d be living in a leafy, quiet suburb called Maple Hill, on a small block the Americans nicknamed “Sauerkraut Hill” because it was now home to a cluster of German families. I translated the street signs for the children and they chuckled at the unfamiliar style. Our new street, Beetle Avenue, amused Gisela the most.

“Is there an insect plague we should worry about?” she chuckled.

“I really hope so,” Felix whispered, so quietly I had to strain to hear him. “I like beetles.”

As Jürgen pulled the car into the driveway, I couldn’t help but compare the simple house to the palatial homes I’d grown up in. This was a single-story dwelling, with a small porch leading to the front door, one window on either side. The house was clad in horizontal paneling, its white paint peeling. There were garden beds in front of the house, but they were overgrown with weeds. There was no lawn to speak of, only patchy grass in places, and the concrete path from the road to the porch was cracked and uneven.

I felt Jürgen’s eyes on my face as I stared out through the windshield, taking it all in.

“It needs a little work,” he conceded, suddenly uncertain. “It’s been so busy since I moved here, I haven’t had time to make it nice for you the way I hoped.”

“It’s perfect,” I said. I could easily picture the house with a fresh coat of paint, gardens bursting to life, Gisela and Felix running around, happy and safe and free as they made friends with the neighborhood children.

Just then, a woman emerged from the house to the left of ours, wearing a dress not unlike mine, her long hair in a thick braid, just like mine.

“Welcome, neighbors!” she called in German, beaming.

“This is Claudia Schmidt,” Jürgen said quietly as he reached to open his car door. “She’s married to Klaus, a chemical en­gineer. Klaus has been at Fort Bliss with me for a few years, but Claudia arrived from Frankfurt a few days ago.”

Sudden, sickening anxiety washed over me.

“Did you know him—”

“No,” Jürgen interrupted me, reading my distress. “He worked in a plant at Frankfurt and our paths never crossed. We will talk later, I promise,” he said, dropping his voice as he nodded toward the children. I reluctantly nodded, as my heart continued to race.

There was so much Jürgen and I needed to discuss, including just how he came to be a free man in America. Phone calls from Europe to America were not available to the gen­eral public, so Jürgen and I planned the move via letters—a slow-motion, careful conversation that took almost two years to finalize. We assumed everything we wrote down would be read by a government official, so I hadn’t asked and he hadn’t offered an explanation about how this unlikely arrangement in America came to be.

I couldn’t get answers yet, not with the children in earshot, so it would have to be enough reassurance for me to know our neighbors were probably not privy to the worst aspects of our past.

Jürgen left the car and walked over to greet Claudia, and I climbed out my side. As I walked around the car to follow him, I noticed a man walking along the opposite side of the street, watching us. He was tall and broad, and dressed in a nondescript, light brown uniform that was at least a size or two too small. I offered him a wave, assuming him to be a German neighbor, but he scoffed and shook his head in dis­gust and looked away.

I’d been prepared for some hostility, but the man’s reaction stung more than I’d expected it to. I took a breath, calming my­self. One unfriendly pedestrian was not going to ruin my first day in our new home—my first day reunited with Jürgen—so I forced a bright smile and rounded the car to meet Claudia.

“I’m Sofie.”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Since we arrived last week, you are all I’ve heard about from your husband! He has been so excited for you to come.”

“I sure have.” Jürgen grinned.

“Are you and the children coming to the party tomorrow?” Claudia asked.

“We are,” I said, and she beamed again. I liked her immediately. It was a relief to think I might have a friend to help me navigate our new life.

“Us too,” Claudia said, but then her face fell a little and she pressed her palms against her abdomen, as if soothing a ten­der stomach. “I am so nervous. I know two English words—hello and soda.”

“That’s a start,” I offered, laughing softly.

“I’ve only met a few of the other wives, but they’re all in the same boat. How on earth is this party going to work? Will we have to stay by our husbands’ sides so they can translate for us?”

“I speak English,” I told her. I was fluent as a child, taking lessons with British nannies, then honing my skills on busi­ness trips with my parents. Into my adulthood, I grew rusty from lack of speaking it, but the influx of American soldiers in Berlin after the war gave me endless opportunities for prac­tice. Claudia’s expression lifted again and now she clapped her hands in front of her chest.

“You can help us learn.”

“Do you have children? I want Gisela and Felix to learn as quickly as they can. Perhaps we could do some lessons all together.”

“Three,” she told me. “They are inside watching televi­sion.”

“You have a television?” I said, eyebrows lifting.

“We have a television too,” Jürgen told us. “I bought it as a housewarming gift for you all.” Gisela gasped, and he laughed and extended his hand to her. I wasn’t surprised when she immediately tugged him toward the front door. She’d long dreamed of owning a television set, but such a luxury was out of reach for us in Berlin.

I waved goodbye to Claudia and followed my family, but I was distracted, thinking about the look of disgust in the eyes of that passing man.

Excerpted from The German Wife by Kelly Rimmer, Copyright © 2022 by Lantana Management Pty, Ltd. Published by Graydon House Books.

About the Author

Kelly Rimmer is the worldwide, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Before I Let You Go, The Things We Cannot Say, and Truths I Never Told You. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, two children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages.

SOCIAL LINKS:
Author website: https://www.kellyrimmer.com
Facebook: @Kellymrimmer
Twitter: @KelRimmerWrites
Instagram: @kelrimmerwrites

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New Release Spotlight — HERE FOR THE DRAMA by Kate Bromley

This summer, it’s much ado about everything.

Becoming a famous playwright is all Winnie ever dreamed about. For now, though, she’ll have to settle for assisting the celebrated, sharp-witted feminist playwright Juliette Brassard. When an experimental theater company in London, England decides to stage Juliette’s most renowned play, The Lights of Trafalgar, Winnie and Juliette pack their bags and hop across the pond.

But the trip goes sideways faster than you can say “tea and crumpets”. Juliette stubbornly vetoes the director’s every choice, and Winnie’s left stage-managing their relationship. Winnie’s own work seems to have stalled, and though Juliette keeps promising to read it, she always has some vague reason why she can’t. Then, Juliette’s nephew Liam enters stage left. He’s handsome, he’s smart, he is devastatingly British, and he and Winnie have sizzling chemistry. But as her boss’s nephew, Liam is definitely off-limits, so Winnie has to keep their burgeoning relationship on the down-low from Juliette. What could go wrong?

Balancing a production seemingly headed for disaster, a secret romance, and the sweetest, most rambunctious rescue dog, will Winnie save the play, make her own dreams come true, and find true love along the way–or will the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune get the best of her?

HERE FOR THE DRAMA
Author: Kate Bromley
ISBN: 9781525811449
Publication Date: June 21, 2022
Publisher: Graydon House Books

Buy Links:
BookShop.org
Harlequin
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Books-A-Million
Powell’s

Excerpt

One

“I’m here and I have coffee!”

After five years as a personal assistant, I have found that entering a chaotic scene with caffeine is the quickest way to ease panic. It’s a distraction, it boosts morale, and if you’re working in the ever-intense theater world, it’s often as necessary as breathing.

Roshni, our second assistant, is quick to approach as the penthouse door swings closed behind me. She’s wearing a knee-length floral romper, and her flawless ebony hair is parted just off to the side. If I wore a romper, it’d look like a man’s bathing costume circa 1916, but on Roshni, it’s the ultimate embodiment of summer fun. I’m still not positive if I want to be her or marry her, but we’ve happily settled on being ride or die work friends in the meantime.

“Thank you so much,” she says, scooping her iced hazelnut coffee out of the to-go tray I’m carrying and casting a nervous glance over her shoulder. “Okay, so, two things. One, I accidentally knocked a pile of papers off Juliette’s desk, which then led to her calling me an anarchist and threatening to have me arrested. And two, she thinks you’re going to London.”

“What makes you say that?”

“She straight-up told me you were going to London.”

“I am not going to London,” I announce, making my voice loud enough to carry through the spacious four-bedroom apartment. With almost a decade of drama study under my belt, my vocal projection is legit.

“Why are you always so resistant to anything remotely ex-citing? To stand still is to go backwards, Winnie.”

I hear her before I see her. Juliette Brassard. My boss of five years, my pseudo-mother, my often-combative sibling, and the perpetual bane of my existence. Working for her is tiring, demanding, slightly monotonous and bizarre, but I love every second of it.

She looks the same as she does most days. Wide-legged pants and a layered top. Always layered. Today it’s a beige cotton shirt and a charcoal vintage vest. Her straight gray-brown hair just reaches her shoulders and thick-rimmed glasses cover her ceaselessly curious chestnut eyes. Her style is a fair reflection of her life—eclectic and casual but secretly expensive.

“It was never the plan for me to go to London,” I tell her. “Roshni is going with you, and you were perfectly happy with the arrangements yesterday.”

“Yes, well, happiness is fleeting, and I realized today that I need my whole team with me if this trip is going to be a success.”

“I checked with the airline this morning,” Roshni says, taking a tentative step forward. “And apparently there’s one seat left in first class.” I shoot her a loving glare as Juliette raises a victorious arm in her direction.

“You see? It’s a sign from the universe.”

“It’s not a sign from the universe,” I counter. “It’s a ridiculous amount of money to pay, and you’re probably the only non-tech billionaire who’s willing to spend that much for a fully reclining seat.”

“A noble sentiment. You should preach that sermon to the bare foot that caressed our cheeks the last time we sat in coach.”

“Okay, we had one uncomfortable flight from LA, and you know full well that the guy was wearing socks.”

“I don’t know that, Winnie. I’ve repressed the memory so deep into my subconscious that I’ll be shuffling around this apartment and whispering about phantom feet until I’m ninety.” She spins away with her typical dramatic flair, opting to walk over to the windows and gazing out at the traffic below. She also covertly checks to see if I’m still watching her.

I choose to ignore her attention-seeking behavior and in-stead place our drinks down on an antique side table. With my hands now free, I pick up a stack of opened event invitations that I left there the day before, giving them one final look over before handing them to Roshni, who’s still standing nearby.

“I’ll reorganize the papers on her desk,” I tell her. “Just RSVP to these, and then we can go over tomorrow’s itinerary. Blue Post-its are a yes. Yellows are a no.”

“Blue, yes. Yellow, no. Got it.” She exits the room with her coffee and the invites, seemingly happy to get out of the fray. If only I was so lucky.

Juliette’s been dropping hints about me going on this trip with them for the past week, but I’ve always managed to side-step the issue. And now, she’s brought the battle to my door-step. Or I guess it’s really her doorstep, since she lives here. And what a doorstep it is.

Twenty floors up on a cobbled Tribeca street, you’d either have to be born into money or wildly successful to own one of these grandly scaled units. Juliette is both. Already a border-line heiress thanks to her Manhattan real-estate mogul father, she then went on to become one of the city’s most celebrated playwrights. She was given everything but still hustled like crazy for her career and threw all of her time and energy into mastering her craft. Luckily for her, it proved to be a lethal combination.

As a native New Yorker and a fiercely proud West-Sider, Juliette’s lived in this apartment for as long as I’ve worked for her. The furniture is mismatched and romantic, and white walls are splashed with green from her dozens of potted plants. Every available surface is covered with old scripts, books, or mugs with half-drunk cups of tea. It’s scholarly chic. If Jane Austen ever traveled forward through time, I like to imagine that this is what her apartment would look like. Alas, dear Jane is nowhere to be found as Juliette steps away from the windows, moving through the space to sit on the arm of her tufted couch.

“Give me one good reason why you can’t go on this trip.” I roll my shoulders, trying to relieve a sudden stress knot before taking a much-needed sip of my latte. “Because you’re leaving tonight. I’m not mentally or physically prepared, and this is supposed to be my yearly vacation time. I have projects that I need to work on, too.”

“Yes, your grand opus of a play that you’re forever editing. Maybe the change of scenery will inspire you. In London, love and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea.”

“Don’t try to mind-trick me with John Osborne quotes.” Juliette groans and pushes up off the sofa. “I’m only trying to help you.”

“It would help me if you read my play and told me what you think.”

She just looks at me then and says nothing, no doubt trying to come up with another lackluster excuse. I’ve asked her to read my play dozens of times over the years, but she always finds a reason not to. She’s too busy, her mind is clouded, she’s not in the right mood.

“I’ll read it when it’s finished. Whatever I say now would alter your creative course.”

Ah, so she doesn’t want to sway my process. Not likely. Juliette’s perpetually happy to give her two cents on everything, especially on another playwright’s work.

“As far as London,” she goes on, “you just need to think about it more. Mull it over, let the idea sink in, and if you could agree to come with us in the next ten to fifteen minutes, that would be great.” She goes to leave the room after that but stops short when her cell phone starts ringing. She looks around but doesn’t find it. I do the same until she digs into the couch cushions and eventually plucks it out. She checks the caller ID and smiles as she answers.

“Liam! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

A little out of breath from her impromptu sofa wrestling match, she twists around and away from me, walking over to the windowsill and picking up a small watering can. She sprinkles her first row of plant babies as she listens to his response. Liam is her nephew and lives in London, which is also where her sister, Isabelle, has lived since she moved there in her twenties. I’ve never met her or him, but I have sent Liam gifts on Juliette’s behalf every Christmas and on his birthday.

“That’s right,” she says, moving on to the next row of plants. “I’m getting in tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Will I be seeing you?” She tries to water the oversized ficus in the corner, but the can is empty. “Sounds great! Here, I’m passing you over to Winnie for a second. Do me a favor and convince her to come on the trip with me. She’s being obstinate.”

“What? No.” My protest is in vain as Juliette’s phone is already in flight. I barely catch it as she disappears into the kitchen, shaking the empty watering can over her shoulder in response.

I clear my throat and put the phone to my ear. “Hello, Liam.”

“Hello, is Winnie there, please?” he asks with mock seriousness.

I fail to suppress my involuntary smile at his polite request and inviting British accent. “This is she,” I answer back.

“Excellent, just the person I was hoping to speak to.”

“My sentiments exactly. To be honest, I’ve secretly been dying to talk to you for years.”

“Have you really?” he asks, surprised.

“No, not really. I don’t even know you.” He says nothing, and I think I might have scared him a bit. “Sorry,” I lightly amend, “I thought we were pretending that we actually meant to have this conversation.”

“Yes, well, that was my initial intention, but it turns out you’re much more convincing than I am. I can only assume that you’ve had formal training?”

“That assumption would be correct.”

“I should have figured.” His voice is surprisingly calm, sounding more like one of my old improv buddies and less like a stranger who’s thousands of miles away. “So,” he goes on, “I’ve been instructed by my aunt to convince you to come to London.”

“She does seem to have that idea stuck in her head.”

“There’s much to recommend it, of course. Red buses. A phenomenal bridge. How do you feel about museums?”

“I hate them,” I tease.

“Absolutely. Nothing to be learned from there. And what about parks?”

“Not into them at all.”

“Couldn’t agree more. I’m violently allergic to pollen, and why should I be forced to carry an EpiPen just so everyone else can enjoy natural beauty? Pure selfishness on their end.”

I smile to myself and pivot around so I’m no longer standing still. “I knew you couldn’t be as normal as you originally sounded. It’s to be expected, though, since you do share a bloodline with Juliette.”

“Yes, we had hoped lunacy would skip a generation, but apparently not.” He pauses then, and I somehow know that he’s smiling, too. “So, how am I faring on my quest so far? Are you packing your bags at this very moment?”

“Unfortunately not. I somehow forgot to bring all my lug-gage and clothes with me to work today, but still, this has been a very pleasant verbal exchange thus far.”

“For me as well. Can I ask what’s holding you back from taking the trip?”

“You may, but I may also choose not to answer.”

“Ah, a lady of secrets, are we?”

“Oh yes,” I answer dramatically. “A lady of many secrets and a play that I need to finish in seventeen days if I’m going to make a contest deadline.”

“Really? I take it that you’re a playwright as well, then?”

“Afraid so.”

“In that case, as you have a very good reason to stay at home rather than crossing the Atlantic, I won’t try to sway you any further…but know that I do so very reluctantly.”

“I appreciate that.”

Juliette sashays back into the room then, the watering can forgotten as she plops down onto the couch with one of her many notebooks. I’ll have to see to the rest of the plants later. She props her feet up on the coffee table and begins to write as I make my way towards her.

“Alright, well, your aunt is now back, so I’ll get going.” “It was very nice meeting you, Winnie.”

“We didn’t actually meet,” I say, correcting him.

“But it sort of feels like we did.”

I find myself grinning once more and shift away so Juliette won’t notice. “I guess it does,” I admit. “Bye, Liam.”

“Goodbye, Winnie.” I pivot back around and hand the phone over. Juliette looks at me with a mischievous sort of smirk as I shake my head and step away to hang my bag in the entryway closet.

Excerpted from Here For the Drama by Kate Bromley, Copyright © 2022 by Kate Bromley

Published by Graydon House Books.

About the Author

KATE BROMLEY lives in New York City with her husband, son, and her somewhat excessive collection of romance novels (It’s not hoarding if it’s books, right?). She was a preschool teacher for seven years and is now focusing full-time on combining her two great passions – writing swoon-worthy love stories and making people laugh. She is also the author of Talk Bookish to Me.

Social Links:
Author Website
Twitter: @kbromleywrites
Instagram: @katebromleywrites
Facebook: @katebromleywrites
Goodreads

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New Release Spotlight — SAVE THE WORLD: twenty sci-fi writers fix the planet

Climate change is no longer a vague future threat. Forests are burning, currents are shifting, and massive storms dump staggering amounts of water in less than 24 hours. Sometimes it’s hard to look ahead and see a hopeful future.

We asked sci-fi writers to send us stories about ways to save the world from climate change. From the myriad of stories we received, we chose the twenty most amazing (and hopefully prescient) tales.

Dive in and find out how we might mitigate climate change via solar mirrors, carbon capture, genetic manipulation, and acts of change both large and small.

The future’s not going to fix itself.

Save the World
Authors: Gustavo Bondoni, J. Scott Coatsworth, Jana Denardo, Derek Des Anges, CJ Erick, J. G. Follansbee, Geoffrey Hart, M.J. Holt, Jennifer Irani, Christopher R. Muscato, Masimba Musodza, Andrew Rucker Jones, Michael McCormick, M.D. Neu, Jennifer R. Povey, N. R. M. Roshak, Holly Schofield, Lisa Short, Heather Marie Spitzberg
Publisher: Other Worlds Ink
Release Date: Wednesday, June 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-955778-34-3 (paperback)
Story Type: Anthology
Cover Artist: J. Scott Coatsworth
Series Title: Writers Save the World
Position (Number) in Series: 2
Universal Buy Links: https://books2read.com/u/mv1Y1l
Liminal Fiction: https://books2read.com/u/mv1Y1l

Writers Save the World is an annual hopepunk anthology from Other Worlds Ink, featuring hopeful stories by sci-fi writers about ways to solve the world’s problems.

Excerpt

No one ate for a full day. At night, they sat around their fires and counted the stars, their boats bobbing in the quiet, dark waters. No electricity was permitted. The drones were shelved. The holo-projectors unplugged. Even the radios were shut off. The next morning, they washed in the invigorating cold of the ocean, and beat their bodies with branches.

This was what Edgard instructed. And what Edgard instructed, everyone obeyed.

The waters seemed bright that morning, despite the depths below. Small dots of sea foam dotted the surface, reflecting the eager light of the new day. The weather was calm, and the ocean peaceful. It was an auspicious morning.

Jason leaned against the rails, elbowing between his crew mates as everyone shuffled for the best view. There was laughter and chatter, some singing, a few rude jokes. The ocean was alive that morning, all the ships of the tribe lining up, energy buzzing across the wide decks.

Then the drumming started, and silence fell. People leaned forward, craning necks.

The canoe emerged from between boats, paddled by a small crew, its painted bow slicing through the water. At the front was Edgard, standing tall. Jason felt someone nudge him, and as he looked over at Amelia, she nodded at the cloak draped over Edgard’s shoulders. The Thunderbird.

The canoe stopped, and Edgard placed a hand in the water. As he rose, he started to sing, lighting a bundle of dried cedar, and waving the smoke over his harpoon. He removed the muscle-shell hooks and wrapped them in cloth, tied rocks around the yew shaft, and placed it in the water. As it sank, his song ended. Edgard turned to face the ships, opened his arms wide, and smiled.

The crews erupted.

It was done.

The harvesting was complete.

—From “Thunder on the Water,” by Christopher R. Muscato

Author Bios

Gustavo Bondoni is novelist and short story writer with over three hundred stories published in fifteen countries, in seven languages.  He is a member of Codex and an Active Member of SFWA. His latest novel is Lost Island Rampage (2021). He has also published three other monster books: Ice Station: Death (2019), Jungle Lab Terror (2020) and Test Site Horror (2020), three science fiction novels: Incursion (2017), Outside (2017) and Siege (2016) and an ebook novella entitled Branch. His short fiction is collected in Pale Reflection (2020), Off the Beaten Path (2019) Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places (2010) and Virtuoso and Other Stories (2011).  

J. Scott Coatsworth lives with his husband Mark in a yellow bungalow in Sacramento. He was indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine. He devoured her library, but as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were. He decided that if there weren’t queer characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends. A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that celebrate fiction reflecting queer reality, and is a full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and the head of its self-publishers committee.

Rachel Hope Crossmanis an ex-fry cook, ex-substitute teacher and retired Montessori teacher. Her childhood year in Athens, Greece left indelible imprints of olive groves, pomegranates and the sparkling, turquoise blue of the Mediterranean upon her mind. She is the author of SAVING CINDERELLA: FAIRY TALES & CHILDREN IN THE 21ST CENTURY, (2014) The Apocryhile Press, which examines the world-wide Cinderella story as an archetype and explains the symbolism of rings, knives, birds, pumpkins and more. Her personal heroes are Harold (and his purple crayon), Peggy Hill and Nancy Pelosi.

Jana Denardo is Queen of the Geeks (her students voted her in) and her home and office are shrines to any number of comic book and manga heroes along with SF shows and movies too numerous to count. There is no coincidence the love of all things geeky has made its way into many of her stories. To this day, she’s still disappointed she hasn’t found a wardrobe to another realm, a superhero to take her flying among the clouds or a roguish star ship captain to run off to the stars with her.

Derek Des Anges is an emerging cross-genre author working in London, who consistently fails to stick to a single format or genre but does at least really consistently write about the queer experience (or some of them, anyway). He’s into fungi, industrial and experimental music, and trying to avoid the climate apocalypse actually flooding his flat too many times, because he has far too many books to consider moving out.

CJ Erick’s stories have appeared in anthologies from WMG Publishing, WordFire Press, and others. He won the FenCon short story competition in 2015. He writes in multiple genres, publishes novels in a space fantasy series, and dabbles in poetry. He’s an MFA student in creative writing at Lindenwood University, and an editorial assistant for the Lindenwood Review. He lives in Dallas area with his wife and their rescue superhero dog Saber-Girl, calls his sourdough bread starter “Ursula” (K. Le Guin), and cooks crazy-good Cajun food for a Midwest Yankee.

J.G. Follansbee’s short stories have appeared in several anthologies, including Others Worlds Ink’s Fix the World. Other publications include Bards and Sages Quarterly, Children, Churches and Daddies, the collection Still Life 2018, and the speculative fiction anthologies Satirica, After the Orange, Spring Into SciFi 2019, Rabbit Hole II, and Sunshine Superhighway. He is the author of the series Tales From A Warming Planet and the trilogy The Future History of the Grail. He has won several awards in the Writers of the Future contest, and he was a finalist in the inaugural Aftermath short story contest. He also has numerous non-fiction book credits. He lives in Seattle.

Geoffrey Hart: Startled by an aggressive dictionary late in her pregnancy, Geoff’s mother was delivered of a child with a precocious antipathy towards users of words. Over time, he transformed this antipathy into a more functional, if equally passive-aggressive, editorial career. After nearly 35 years, the flame burns brightly as ever, leading to an errant, semi-evangelical career ranting against the evils of words from pulpits at any editing or technical writing conference that will have him, seeking new recruits for his cause. In his spare time, he roams the globe, entertaining locals with creative and unrestrained interpretations of their linguistic conventions. He also commits occasional fictions, and has sold 46 stories.

M. J. Holt lives with her husband on their 60-acre family farm with many animals on a peninsula in Puget Sound. She is horrified that the entire world isn’t working to decrease pollution of all kinds. When she was a teenager, she and her mother sat under an ancient crabapple tree and read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Her mother told her that future generations would pay the price for the sins of past generations. That price has increased and now several generations later, some not yet born, will pay the price. Lightning struck that crab tree decades ago. It grew on land her great grandfather bought in 1892. Her great grandmother farmed the land and had the current house, started in 1900, built. The farm passed to her grandfather, and then to her mother. She lives in that house amid the surviving bits of her ancestors’ lives. This generational continuity informs her fiction. Her crime thriller novels, The Devil’s Safe (2021) and its sequel Making Angels (2022) can be found on Amazon. Recent short stories have appeared in the anthologies Black-Eyed Peas on New Year’s Day: An Anthology of Hope, Low Down Dirty Vote Volume II, Alternate Theologies, and her poetry may be found in the poetry anthologies 300K, Timeless Love, and other periodicals. She earned separate undergraduate degrees in History and English Literature, and a Masters in English Literature. She is a member of SFWA, MWA, and other writing organizations.

Jennifer Irani lives and works in southern California. Her story, “Graft,” was inspired by the recent fires in California, Greta Thunberg, and generation Z. A version of this story first appeared in Writing in Place: Stories from a Pandemic. Her work has been published in the anthology Dove Tales Empathy in Art: Embracing the Other. She has published essays in Orange Coast magazine. Her essay, Regeneration, received honorable mention in the Writers Challenge 2021 on Medium.com. Her poem, “Cool Colors Warm the Soul,” was selected for the Connecting Through Color, Art and Poetry exhibit. She is a member of Barbara Demarco’s Literary Posse.

Andrew Rucker Jones was born and raised in Falls Church, Virginia. No muse heralded his birth, and he has not been writing novels since he was in diapers. He received his Bachelor’s degree from North Carolina State University in mathematics with minors in computer programming and German. He has always loved reading, so when the time came to choose a new career after twenty years in IT (programmer, system administrator, manager), he decided writing looked like fun. If only it paid. He now lives in Mannheim, Germany, with his Georgian wife, who actually earns money, and their three children, the eldest of whom also earns more than he.

Micháel McCormick likes to write stories in his Batman pajamas. He and his wife also enjoy travel, hiking, Tai Chi, and perplexing cats. They split their time between Saint Paul, Minnesota and Lake Superior. Mike’s work has appeared in Arcanist, Daily SF, DreamForge, Frozen Wavelets, Grievous Angel, Metastellar, Talking Stick, and elsewhere.

Christopher R. Muscato is an adjunct history instructor and writer from Colorado, as well as the former writer-in-residence for the High Plains Library District. He has published over a dozen short stories and is thrilled to be a part of this project.

Masimba Musodza was born in Zimbabwe, and has lived most of his adult life in the United Kingdom. His short stories, mostly in the speculative fiction genre, have appeared in periodicals and anthologies around the world. He has written two novels and a novella in his first language, ChiShona. His collection of science-fiction stories, The Junkyard Rastaman & Other Stories, was published in 2020. Masimba also writes for stage and screen.

M.D. Neu: Growing up in an accepting family. internationally award-winning author M.D. Neu always wondered why there were never stories reflecting our diverse queer society. Surrounded by characters that only reflected heterosexual society, he decided to change that and began writing, wanting to tell epic stories that reflect our varied world. When not writing, M.D. Neu works for a non-profit in Silicon Valley, and travels with his husband of twenty plus years.

Jennifer R. Povey: Born in Nottingham, England, Jennifer R. Povey now lives in Northern Virginia, where she writes everything from heroic fantasy to stories for Analog. She has written a number of novels across multiple sub genres. Additionally, she is a writer, editor, and designer of tabletop RPG supplements for a number of companies. Her interests include horseback riding, Doctor Who and attempting to out-weird her various friends and professional colleagues.

NRM Roshakis an award-winning Canadian author and translator. Their stories have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Galaxies SF, Daily Science Fiction, and Future Science Fiction Digest, and has been translated into several languages. They live in Ontario, Canada, with a small family and a loud cat.

Holly Schofield travels through time at the rate of one second per second, oscillating between the alternate realities of city and country life. Her stories have appeared in Analog, Lightspeed, Escape Pod, and many other publications throughout the world. She hopes to save the world through science fiction and homegrown heritage tomatoes.

Lisa Short is a Texas-born, Kansas-bred writer of fantasy, science fiction and horror. She has an honorable discharge from the United States Army, a degree in chemical engineering, and twenty years’ experience as a professional engineer. Lisa currently lives in Maryland with her husband, two youngest children, father-in-law and cats. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association and a Futurescapes 2021 alumnus.

Heather Marie Spitzberg is an environmental author, scientist, and lawyer who lives in New York’s Hudson River Valley with her family. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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New Release Spotlight — ARCHITECT OF COURAGE by Victoria Weisfeld

Ordinary Man, Extraordinary Situation

In June 2011, September was weeks away, and the full dread of the approaching anniversary hadn’t yet settled on New York City’s residents. But from One Police Plaza to the FBI’s grim headquarters in Washington, D.C., the top brass harbor a rumbling in the gut. Each person who works for them down the line shares their unease, from every rookie cop walking the beat to the lowliest surveillance specialist. And Archer Landis is about to get caught up in their fixation.

Landis is not one of his city’s guardians, and a different sort of electricity runs under his skin on this warm Thursday evening. A highly successful Manhattan architect—a man you’d say has his life totally, enviably, in order—Landis works the room at a Midtown reception, shaking hands, being seen, accompanying his cheerful greetings with the convivial clinking of ice in an untouched glass of scotch.

When the noisy crowd becomes sufficiently dense and everyone present can say they’ve seen him, he will slip away. Out on Fifth Avenue, he will grab a cab for the run south to Julia’s Chelsea apartment. It’s a trip that will hurtle him into deadly danger. Everyone and everything he cares about most will be threatened, and he will have to discover whether he has the courage to fight his way clear.

Book Details:

Genre: Crime / Murder Mystery
Published by: Black Opal Books
Publication Date: June 4, 2022
Number of Pages: 350
ISBN: 1953434708 (ISBN13: 978-1953434708)
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Read an excerpt:Chapter 1

When Manhattan architect Archer Landis let himself into Julia’s apartment, he was surprised to find it dark. He strode down the short entry hall to the living room and felt for the light switch. The heavy draperies were closed, and thick blackness pressed in on him. A trace of her perfume teased the air, along with another smell—elemental, evoking . . . something.

“Julia? I’m here.”

For Landis, this second-floor apartment was a treasure-house, its sangria-colored walls crowded with portraits and huge mirrors with carved, gold-painted frames. Deeply fringed paisley shawls draped chaises upholstered in carmine velvet. It would require all his French curves and a full palette of rose and violet pigments to reproduce the effect.

His glance traveled the room, skipping past something he didn’t want to see, something his brain didn’t at first accept that he had seen, until it reached the farthest corner and unwillingly returned to settle on the room’s one discordant object: Julia sprawled on a chaise, the white lace ruffle of her shirtfront soaked with blood.

For a moment, Landis’s heart stopped. He stood frozen at the edge of the room, yet he saw himself rushing to her, kissing her hands, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her, soothing her, calling her. She didn’t move, and neither did he. He choked before he could create a single word.

Now he identified the strange smell. Blood. Blood that had oozed from a huge wound in her chest. Blood that drenched the crocheted lace of her shirt and darkened the crimson velvet of the chaise. A stray drop, spattering upward, had left a dot on her chin. He took two halting steps toward her.

Shouldn’t he wipe off that spot? Couldn’t he put all the blood back? Couldn’t he press his hands on her ravaged chest and seal life inside? Her dark eyes, wide open and fixed, gazed blankly toward him and told him he could not.

He stepped backward to sag against the wall and slowly collapsed to the floor. His head drooped. He sobbed into the hands that had held her hands, caressed her face. Hands that should be holding her now. When he raised his head, tears blurred the contours of her pale face, the empty black pools of her eyes. All else washed by a tide of red.

He couldn’t bear to think about the terror of her final moments. What was the last thing she did? What did she see? Who did she see? Who? A dark cloud of vengeance rose in him like smoke from a bonfire. He had to call the police, make them come immediately. Set the hounds of the law on the scent of her killer.

Yet.

Yet he shouldn’t—he couldn’t—be found in her apartment. His presence would damage his reputation and ruin Julia’s. The lie he’d told his wife Marjorie about his evening dinner plans rolled like a boulder through his tumbling thoughts. His associates, his team, the people he spent every day with, considered Julia a colleague, and they’d never trust him again. He wasn’t on easy terms with betrayal—not enough practice. Nor was he clever with lies and excuses. He couldn’t conjure up a plausible reason for being in her apartment when he was so clearly supposed to be elsewhere.

He had to leave, to escape the awful sight of Julia’s body, the awful reality of it. What did I touch? He scanned the room. At one time or another, he’d touched furniture, switches, faucets, dishes, glassware, books, and more. He’d have to explain those fingerprints, eventually.

Evidence of this visit, though, could disappear. If only he’d never come tonight; if only he’d never made this awful discovery. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his presence away, scrubbing around the light switch. His back was to her, his eyes were squeezed shut, and still he saw Julia’s broken body.

With a final look at the face he loved, Landis promised her she wouldn’t be alone and in the dark for long and retreated down the hall. He wrapped his hand in the handkerchief, quietly opened the apartment door, wiped the outside knob, and hurried downstairs to the lobby.

He hadn’t seen any of her neighbors when he came in, would one of them be there now and see him leave? He ran his hand through his long and distinctive white hair, straightened the collar of his suit, and paused to compose his face. No, the lobby was clear. He exhaled.

He’d walk east to Eighth Avenue to hail an uptown cab. A few cars were parked on the opposite side of the street, and he didn’t see any pedestrians. Except there. Up ahead, across the street, an elderly woman turned the corner, heading his way, led by yappy wirehaired terrier. Tall as he was, Landis was hard to miss. The dog looked straight at him, barking furiously.

“Toby!” the woman admonished in her brittle voice. Her arm strained forward with the pull of the leash. Her attention was on the dog, and Landis still hoped he could slip away.

“Toby!” she screamed. “Come back!” Dragging his leash, Toby darted between parked cars. An SUV hissed toward them from the next corner.

Landis stepped into the street and waved both arms. The SUV squealed to a stop. He scooped Toby up and handed him to his quivering mistress. “No harm done.”

She hugged the rambunctious terrier, a little plastic bag of poop flapping in her hand. “Toby, you naughty boy. You mustn’t run from Mama like that.”

Landis edged away, but she wasn’t finished thanking him. She opened her handbag.

Was she fumbling for a tip, for Christ’s sake? No, she pulled out a tissue and wiped her eyes. He put a few feet between them. “Now, Toby, you be good,” and to her, “Are you all right now?”

“We’re fine. You go on. You’ve done your good deed for this evening.”

#

All the way up Eighth Avenue Landis huddled in a corner of the sour-smelling cab, breathing hard. The swarthy driver stared at him in the rearview mirror. Under the man’s suspicious gaze, he returned his phone to his pocket instead of calling 911.

The sticky breath of the early June night blew in through the cab’s half-open window. This ride felt completely different from the one he’d taken—what? forty minutes before?—when he’d slipped out of the Plaza Hotel, past the line of malodorous horse-drawn carriages waiting for tourists, and toward the honking melee of Fifth Avenue. There, he hailed a bright yellow cab and climbed inside, full of thoughts of Julia. A buzzing energy had him drumming the leather seats, willing the traffic lights ahead to turn green.

Off the rails, heading straight into the abyss.

Before that earlier ride, Landis believed himself securely moving forward, on track and at speed, in full control of his considerable professional talents and personal powers. He’d worked the room at the Plaza, a reception for his peers, the city’s most talented magicians in glass and steel and stone.

They sought him out, and he laughed with them, shook hands and patted backs, accompanying his good cheer with the convivial clink of ice in a glass of single malt. He bear-hugged the evening’s honoree, Phil Prinz. He brushed off praise and bestowed it on others. Accomplishment haloed him, and because he was generous in his success, it did not breed resentment, but drew the light to him.

He made sure everyone would remember greeting him, touching him. When the noisy crowd became sufficiently dense, he’d made his discreet escape. Now his reentry into that world had to be just as smooth.

#

The dinner was under way when he arrived, and he had to find his seat, leaving no time to place the call right then. He’d missed the salad.

“What’s wrong, Arch? Where’ve you been?” a colleague asked. “You look awful.”

Landis adjusted the knot of his tie. “Touch of a bug. Killed my appetite.” He cringed at how easily the lie came. It was what he’d planned to say if anyone asked why he didn’t appear at dinner. At least now they wouldn’t question it if he jumped up later and went out for a few minutes. He’d call the police from a hotel phone, not his cell. Much better. He’d do it between the main course and dessert.

The men at the table commiserated. “It’s going around,” one said. “Three of my people are out.”

As his tablemates ate and shared shoptalk, Landis frowned at his plate. Who would kill Julia? What possible reason could there be? Nothing in her world explained it. Her working life was his office, and her social life was him. He was confident of that, of her. Was it a random, senseless, act? Or did some secret peril lurk close by? If so, it could be as close as his own skin.

When the servers came to clear, the food on his plate was rearranged but uneaten. The evening’s introductions and accolades began. The words of the welcoming speeches jumbled meaninglessly. He rested his head on his hand and mapped out what he’d say to the police. Dial 911, give the address, disconnect. Don’t answer questions. Don’t give them time to ask anything. How long does it take to trace a call? He’d stay on the phone for seconds. Only the facts, no context. Hang up.

Here came dessert. He’d lost another chance to make his call. The server set a collapsing strawberry pavlova in front of him. Frothy white meringue shell, a lake of red juice. Landis’s stomach turned over. He pushed the dish away and took a great gulp from his water glass.

Now he was stuck. It would be too awkward to step out during the commendations, especially since Landis’s long-time friend and fellow Yale alumnus, Phil Prinz, was receiving the main prize—the 2011 Calder Award for Integrity in Architectural Practice. Called to the lectern, Phil’s first words were to ask the award’s previous recipients to stand. Landis wobbled to his feet, waved—my God, did I just smile? His other hand gripped the rim of the table so tightly he could hardly pry his fingers loose.

Prinz’s high-minded theme was courage: physical, mental, emotional, and moral. He might have been speaking directly to Landis, chiding him.

Physical courage, Prinz said, is the kind people think of most often, the kind that lets us ski black diamond runs, compete in marathons, and drive the Jersey Turnpike. A misstep can end with a trip to the emergency department, but any physical damage is visible, treatable, and often heals completely.

Not when a hole has been blown through your chest. Landis fingered the stem of his water glass.

Mental courage—being brave enough to rally your mental faculties, make critical decisions, and not be paralyzed into inaction—demands more, Prinz said, citing race car drivers and soldiers in battle. Landis saw himself in Julia’s apartment, stunned, panicked, choking on tears. Direct hit.

“Emotional courage is when you put your inner self, your core being, in harm’s way, when you risk sustaining wounds people may never see and that may never heal, when you face truths you’d rather ignore. It’s when you risk the very essence of yourself.”

Of course Landis had initial reservations about an affair with one of his employees; of course he’d worried his wife Marjorie might discover it. But he’d left those concerns behind. Instead, he’d followed the single shiny track that appeared in front of him: he fell in love. Unexpected, unlikely, unwise. Julia had opened his heart, revealed to him his true self.

Finally, Prinz said, there’s moral courage—when you stick your neck out for some cause not your own simply because it’s the right thing to do.

The white noise inside Landis’s head drowned out the rest. Although the speech wasn’t especially profound, it earned a standing ovation that precipitated a rush for the doors. Clamoring colleagues swarmed the lobby. A discreet telephone call was impossible.

Moment after moment, he put off calling the police until not calling became inevitable. He simply could not speak the words that would make Julia’s death real, that would pierce his chest like arrows. His life had a hole in the middle of it, and he felt its razor edges. Unless he grabbed onto something, he would fall through. What he clutched tight was his shameful secret.

Chapter 2

Landis’s penthouse with its dramatic window walls was an aerie of straight lines and right angles. The sparsely furnished interior was gray and white—his wife’s taste a stark contrast to Julia’s. Only the Miró hanging on a far wall provided a restrained confetti of color. He was too drained to appreciate the apartment’s muted comforts, however; wherever he looked, he saw the red blur of Julia’s apartment.

His son lay in wait. At age 28, Hawkins Landis was bent on living in comfort while he launched his own architectural career at his own leisurely pace. After spending a couple of years knocking around Europe’s capitals, he’d returned to the States in March, three long months ago. He manipulated his father into hiring him and took up residence in his old room. Tonight, Landis was hardly in the door when Hawk resumed an argument from earlier that evening.

“While you were at Phil’s dinner, I thought more about my situation, and all I can say is you don’t get it, Dad. No matter what I do at Landis + Porter, people will knock me down. They’ll say I’m nothing without your help. It doesn’t matter how good I am.”

“That’s baloney, and you know it.” Landis desperately wanted not to have this conversation. Not tonight. His head was pounding. “The projects will speak for themselves. Eventually.”

“I’m not designing real buildings. I’m doing scut work. The other associates have real projects.”

Hawk’s whining tone hit the sensitized spot in Landis’s brain like a dentist’s drill. “For Christ’s sake, you’re starting out. My lead people—Ty, Charleston, Julia”—he caught his breath—“have been with me for years. Always up for any assignment. Pay your dues, Hawk.” His throat tightened; he needed air. He reached up to loosen his tie.

“Not Julia. She’s new.” When Landis didn’t answer, Hawk said, “You think they’re so perfect. Well, they’re not. They get special treatment. I’ve seen it. You’re not giving me a chance.”

Landis glared. “I’m confused. You say people will criticize you because they’ll think I gave you unfair advantages, and now you’re asking for one?” With a grunt, he pulled off the tie and flung it on the sofa.

“That’s so like you. You make everything my fault. I’m not important to you.”

“Now, hold on—” His voice logjammed with jostling emotions, but Hawk cut him off.

“I need to be where I have friends.”

Marjorie walked into the living room. A long knit skirt and tunic in some pale color draped her thin frame. “What’s going on? Archer? What did you say to him?” She walked to Hawk’s side and put her arm around their son’s waist. “What’s happening here?”

Landis waited for Hawk to explain himself, knowing his own version of the argument would make matters worse. Hawk jerked away from her and left the room. At the end of the hall, the bathroom door slammed. Landis winced.

Throat aching, he said, “Don’t ask me.”

“Is he unhappy? At work?”

“He wants bigger projects, but he’s a neophyte.”

“Well, of course he’s ambitious, he’s your son.” It didn’t sound like a compliment.

“But he doesn’t want people to think he’s had any special breaks. He gets the same treatment all the associates do.” All except Julia, exceptional Julia.

“But he’s your son. That should be special.”

“Marjorie, think about it. That would be the worst thing for him.” He put his hand to his forehead. “To tell you the truth, I wish he’d move out. When is he ever in a good mood?”

“How can you say that? I like having him here. We talk. We have good conversations. The minute you come home, an argument starts.”

“His constant hostility is my fault?”

“Anyway, he can’t afford a decent place. This is where he belongs. I’d worry about him if he weren’t here.”

“That was a long time ago, Marjorie. He’s had a lot of help since then.” Since his teenage rebellion. His suicide attempts. His acting out. Landis had never taken any of that as seriously as she had.

“He’s right, you know—you shouldn’t treat the others better than you do him.”

“What others? What the hell—”

“Hawk says they’re out to get him, that they’re nothing but back-stabbing sycophants.” Her voice rose, betraying her anxiety the way it did every time she had to defend Hawk.

“That’s not true, Marjorie. They’ve been nothing but helpful to him. They’ve never said a word—not one hint of criticism.”

“They’re not stupid. There’s more than one way for them—and you—to undermine a young person with talent and chip away at his confidence.”

“I don’t know what he’s told you, but neither of you knows what you’re talking about.”

“Hawk knows, and that’s why he’s threatening to leave you.”

“That’s what he meant by being somewhere he has friends? He would leave Landis + Porter?”

“That’s right,” said Hawk, strolling back into the room. “Starting Monday, I’ll be working at BLK. Ivan Karsch made me a very generous offer.”

“Oh.” Marjorie slumped to the sofa, stunned.

“BLK?” Landis snorted. “According to reputation, they eat their young. And Ivan Karsch, who sued L + P a couple years ago? Great role model.” He stood behind Marjorie and grabbed the back of the sofa. “So this is decided? And tonight’s the first I hear about it?”

***

Excerpt from Architect of Courage by Victoria Weisfeld. Copyright 2022 by Victoria Weisfeld. Reproduced with permission from Victoria Weisfeld. All rights reserved.

Interview with Victoria Weisfeld

What was the inspiration behind this story?

Out of nowhere, or so it seemed, a very specific scene came to me. I envisioned a man going to his mistress’s apartment and finding her shot to death. There was no flailing about in search of the best place to start the story (as often happens when I write a short story). The beginning of Architect of Courage has always been right there.

Tell us about your main character.

Archer Landis is a successful Manhattan architect, confronted with multiple circumstances he’s in no way prepared for. You get a strong sense of the kind of person he is from the way people treat him. They like him. They trust him. At the beginning of the book, he makes a big mistake—a sin of omission—and though no one else knows about it or suspects it, everything he does in the rest of the story is at least partly an effort to atone.

Which is your favorite minor character and why?

I especially like Carlos Salvadore, who takes on the kinds of tasks (guns and flashbangs and stuff) that are unfamiliar to Arch. He’s another upstanding guy.

What is your favorite personality trait of your main character?

His determination to do the right thing, even in the face of great uncertainty. And even when it’s hard.

What is your favorite personality trait of your bad guy/girl?

He is a dutiful son.

Tell us something funny about one of your characters.

Arch and his architectural firm are both clients of lawyer Colm O’Hanlon. O’Hanlon’s family have been Americans for generations, but he affects an Irish accent and slang, just because it amuses him.

Your character is at a bookstore. Which section is he/she shopping in? What book is in his/her hand right now?

Arch would be in the design section, trolling for ideas. He also is fascinated by the language of flowers and their symbolic importance in design details.

Please share a few favorite lines or one paragraph.

“He appreciated the next generation’s skill and speed on the computer, but for him, trained in a different era, architecture was a tactile discipline, a process that began with pencil in hand. Understanding a structure meant drawing it, its shapes and volumes, then creating a clay rendering or white-paper models. A few paper cuts, clay packed under his fingernails proved he was engaged in construction, creation. He and Julia had shared that passion for making a space take form under their fingertips. Now the 3-D printer did that job, and one of them hummed away in the back room, left to work overnight. It wasn’t the same.”

How did you come up with the title?

That was tough. I review a lot of books and have been surprised at how many have the same or very similar titles. As you know, titles cannot be copyrighted. I tried to find something unique that had a person as a central element. The “courage” comes from a speech Arch listens to early in the book, about four types of courage—physical, mental, emotional, and moral. By the time the story finishes, he’s displayed all four. I started with the title “The Four Proofs of Courage,” but that seemed murky and abstract. As I say, it was tough.

Tell us about your cover art and how it pertains to your story.

It’s a photograph of several of the ultramodern buildings in Dubai’s marina district, one of the places Arch’s firm has an office. My publisher found it, and I like the warm, rosy color.

Of all the books out there, why should readers choose this one?

It is simultaneously a crime novel, with steady action, for readers who like that, and, at the same time, it’s the story of a man trying to regain his self-esteem. So if you asked me, plot-driven or character-driven? That would be a difficult choice to make, though I’d end up with character-driven.

Is there an underlying theme in your book?

If so, tell us about it and why/if it’s important to you. I’ve been thinking about all the ways the corrosive effects of prejudice appear in the book, although that word never appears. You see it. If this story could contribute in any small way to increasing recognition of that problem, I’d be grateful.

When you first begin writing a new book, is your main focus on the characters or the plot?

Plot first, I suppose, because I put the characters in a situation. I don’t know them yet. I don’t know how they’d react. After a get-acquainted period, they take over and shape events because of the people they are. I hope that makes sense!

Why do you write within your chosen genre?

Crime/mystery/thrillers are my favorite genre to read, so that’s what I write.

How much research goes into your fiction writing? What is your approach?

Tons! Because I’m writing about real places and real professions, the details have to be right, or at least plausible. I want my readers to feel they are really there. To make sure the policing aspects were correct, I had the help of a retired NYPD detective. I use maps and Google street view, do photography research, make floor plans—everything I can do so as not to give readers a big “huh?” moment.

Is there a time of day or night when you’re most creative?

Early morning is best for me. Robert Olen Butler says that’s the time of day you have greatest access to your subconscious mind. As he says, “Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream.” In my particular case, my subconscious solves a lot of writing problems. In the early chapters of the first draft of Architect of Courage, I had the police give Arch a lot of confusing evidence—letters found, photographs of scars on Julia’s wrists indicating a serious suicide attempt. I’d call this the “throwing the spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks” approach. At that time, I didn’t know how these potential clues would fit in or even if they would. If they didn’t, I’d just edit them out later. I forgot all about them and wrote on. Meanwhile my subconscious was trying to make sense of these early clues, and 255 pages later, I found out why those scars were there. Perfect fit.

Tell us about your process for naming your characters.

You’re asking whether I operate the way Dickens did, naming everyone beforehand? No, I work on the names as I go along. I changed the main character’s name in response to a comment from my writer’s group, and it felt I had to get to know him all over again. I don’t recommend it. The names have to sound right to me. Not just any name will do.

What is the biggest challenge for you in writing from the opposite gender’s POV?

Men are a lot more definite in their statements. Where a woman might say, “Would you mind looking over this manuscript, it’s really still rather rough? I just want a second opinion,” a man might say, “Read this.” That’s an exaggeration, but a lifetime habit of putting qualifiers and mini-apologies into my sentence—had to shed that!

Do you outline first or take an idea and run blindly?

Blind as a bat. I write until I run out of steam, maybe about 20,000 words in. Then I assess. Mapping out the relationships among the characters, their yearnings, their obstacles, always suggests new patterns that get me going on the next big chunk. As I go along, I keep a running list of story questions, issues large and small that aren’t answered in the text (yet), like “where did those scars come from?” and I review it at the end to make sure they’ve all been answered. Or if they can’t be answered, how to handle it.

Do you set your books in real locations or do you make them up?

Manhattan is a real place; so is the Flatiron neighborhood where Arch’s office is located. The office itself is totally fictional. During the course of the novel he goes to Brussels and Tarifa, Spain. They would probably be recognizable to someone who knows them, though the hotel in Tarifa is pure fiction. Researching a specific place or neighborhood provides details and plot points I can work into the story. Arch visits Brussels because his firm is participating in the redevelopment of a metro station there, in the heart of the European Union district. (Coincidentally, that station was being redeveloped in real life, and I found a treasure trove of information about it online.) It seemed like an ideal spot for a terrorism event, which Arch is worried about. Several years after I worked on those chapters, terrorists did bomb the next station on the line. Very unnerving.

About the Author

Vicki Weisfeld’s short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, Sherlock Holmes MM, and Black Cat MM, among others, as well as in a number of highly competitive crime anthologies, including: Busted: Arresting Stories from the Beat, Seascapes: Best New England Crime Stories, Passport to Murder (Bouchercon), The Best Laid Plans, Quoth the Raven, and Sherlock Holmes in the Realms of Edgar Allan Poe. Her stories have won awards from the Short Mystery Fiction Society and the Public Safety Writers Association. She’s a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and other crime fiction organizations. For the past decade, she’s blogged several times a week at www.vweisfeld.com. She is a frequent book reviewer for the UK website, crimefictionlover.com.

Catch Up With Victoria:
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New Release Spotlight — NEW LIFE IN AUTUMN by Michael G. Williams

THE HARDEST PART OF DYING IS DECIDING HOW TO PASS THE TIME

Valerius Bakhoum died and kept no living. Now he can walk the streets of his city with a new face and a new name and finally feel a little bit respected. Too bad he’s still flat broke and behind on the rent. Unsure what to do with himself—and perhaps even of who he is—Valerius resumes his career as a detective by taking up the oldest case in his files: where do the children go?

Throughout his own youth on the streets of Autumn, last of the Great Flying Cities, Valerius knew his fellow runaways disappear from back alleys and other hiding places more than people realize. Street kids even have a myth to explain it: the Gotchas, who steal them away in the night. With nothing but time on his hands, Valerius dives in head-first to settle the question once and for all and runs smack into a more pressing mystery:

Who killed one of Valerius’ former lovers?

And do they know he’s still alive?

Return to the mean streets of Autumn by Valerius Bakhoum’s side as he shines a light into shadowy corners and finds secrets both sacred and profane with shockingly personal connections to who he was—and who he might become.

Warnings: This book does involve mild violence, capture and impending torture by antagonists, and discussion of the murder of children.

New Life in Autumn
Michael G. Williams
Series Title: Books of Autumn
Position (Number) in Series: Second
Necessary to Read Previous Books: Yes
Publishing Company: Falstaff Books
Release Date: Tuesday, June 14 2022
Cover Artist: Melissa McArthur
Universal Purchase Link: https://www.limfic.com/book/35692/

Excerpt

Across three quarters of the City of Autumn, street kids are an unthinkable paradox. For the most part, the Pluses and the PlusPlus and all the other manifold forms of intentional humankinds only ever run into the sorts of kids someone wanted badly enough to design. There are already a billion people in the world between the Empire, the Eastern Expanse, and the less-organized places nobody’s fought over quite yet. Having kids willy-nilly wouldn’t add up, not with so many people already in line for the breakfast bar. That’s one of the many objections the Spiralists put forward to continued cultivation of Artisanal Humans like me—well, like I was.

That’s going to take some getting used to.

Anyway, widespread cultural insistence on bespoke offspring leaves a lot of kids out in the cold, literally. The ones I described before, orphaned by chance or abandoned for turning out imperfect or who got tired of their old life and decided to chase a new one are, in the remaining fourth-to-fifth of the City, as common as cobblestones and just as underfoot. There are plenty of them, and the supply continually refreshes, and I went to distinctly other streets than theirs. It isn’t that I wanted to avoid them, but talking would have taken money or some sort of barter and I was too short by half on either. I suspected it would have generated too much information rather than too little. A street kid asked to tell a story for a steam bun or a little reliably spendable scrip will gin up all the story you want and then some. I didn’t need urban legends. I needed facts, and that meant a much more gruesome start than some urchin milking my wallet with tall tales of what goes bump in the night.

I mentioned to Clodia one time that I had a friend who worked the Cisterns. The City of Autumn is like any town: its people have to piss like anybody else and its gutters often swell with rain. Autumn routinely flies into weather systems to gather up fresh water, and there’s a vast infrastructure to purify it for use by humankinds. I could spend ten pages telling you about the ponds in Down Preserves where rainwater burbles and bubbles under pressure, mixing in fresh air. The whole City sleeps atop a bed stuffed with pumps and gravity lines, charcoal and scrub algae, grates and artificial reefs and purpose-built shrimp—but I won’t.

Instead, I’ll simply say this: by the time water gets to us, the only thing left is the scent of the air where it first fell as rain. I don’t understand how the process works. I don’t care, either. The important thing, the thing none of us think about too much in case it, too, is another pretty lie in the quilt of them we make over our lives, is it happens. Sip from Lotta’s to remember the dead, cup your hands in the fountains of Domino, turn on a tap in the average Autumn kitchen, and you’ll enjoy the aroma of a field somewhere in Afrique, or a mutant blossom somewhere on a nameless plain in the vast Recovery Zone between Big River and the Salt Flat.

But on the other end of the system? Once all that delicious water has run its course through bodies and beer kegs and ice machines and steam plants?

That’s called Cistern Intake. I knew a gal who worked that part of the system. You could smell it on her from ten meters away. I always felt sorry for her, because it was so baked into her skin, ground down into her pores, she didn’t even smell it anymore herself.

On the plus side, she always had plenty of room in a bar. Nobody crowded her for long.

Frankie was a Mannie. Generally speaking, no variety of Plus—nice, “normal”people with designer genes—would even be considered for her job. Even applying for it might result in getting a replication error assessment. Odds are good you’ve already heard the story from a few years ago about the PlusPlus whose big ideas on “lived egalitarianism” got her carted off for genotoxicity screening. What most folks don’t know, however, is it was a stunt on both sides. Sure, she only wanted to make a point by suing the City for the right to join a scrubber team, not actually take the job if they offered it. But the City went out of its way to make the counterpoint in response, escorting her kicking and screaming away from the workhouse where they keep the little gliders they use to clean the Fore Barrier’s external face.

I assume she hoped to drum up publicity for her so-called perverse beliefs. I think she expected the City would do something to make an example of her, sure, but something more symbolic. You know, a big fine she could never pay, or maybe a few nights in the Palace of Imperial Justice. Something Imperial media could print without making anybody lose their lunch.

Instead, they dragged her —did I mention the kicking and screaming?—straight to the Hive. No trial. No judge. No pretenses. The Hive is right there at the front of the City, and the tiny portion of it sticking out above street level is visible if you climb high enough in Down Preserves and look to the Fore. The joke goes, they put the City’s worst criminals out there so we’ll hear them screaming if we crash into anything. This lady’s worst crime, though, was trying to prove we’re not all equal, not in the lives we’re allowed to lead or the risks we’re expected to take in the course of them. It sounds like heroism to you or me, but to the powers that be, the Sinceres, the Spiralists, and all the other people who don’t care if the Empire is a heap of shit as long as they’re near enough the top to catch a breeze, she’d committed the worst kind of social treason: she’d violated the spoken and unspoken rules propping up the class system on which they relied.

About the Author

Michael G. Williams writes queer-themed science fiction, urban fantasy, and horror celebrating monsters, macabre humor, and subverted expectations. He’s the author of three series for Falstaff Books: the award-winning vampire/urban fantasy series The Withrow Chronicles; the thrilling urban fantasy series SERVANT/SOVEREIGN featuring real estate, time travel, and San Francisco’s greatest historical figures; the science fiction noir A Fall in Autumn, winner of the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award; and a bunch of short stories. He strives to present the humor and humanity at the heart of horror and mystery with stories of outcasts and loners finding their people.

Michael will be the Guest of Honor at Ret-Con in 2023, co-hosts Arcane Carolinas, studies Appalachian history and folklore at Appalachian State University, and is a brother in St. Anthony Hall. He lives in Durham, NC, with his husband, a variety of animals, and more and better friends than he probably deserves.

Connect:
Website
Facebook (Personal Page): @mcmanlypants
Facebook (Author Page): @MichaelGWilliamsAuthor
Twitter: @mcmanlypants
Instagram: @mcmanlypants
Goodreads
Liminal Fiction
Amazon Author Page

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Spotlight on SAPPHIRE: HOME AND ABROAD by M.D. Grimm

The time has come.

The Dark Mage, Lord Morgorth, and Aishe of the Ravena Tribe, are to become bondmates.

Morgorth is equal parts nervous and excited. He wants to unite with Aishe in the sacred dialen ceremony, to proclaim their devotion to the world, to show everyone that Aishe is his equal and deserving of respect. After all they’ve survived together, why shouldn’t they make the cosmic promise before friends and family? But duty must often come before pleasure. When Morgorth’s estranged mentor, Master Ulezander, comes to him with a time-sensitive mission involving a major stone of power, Morgorth has little choice but to acquiesce.

Aishe knows his mate struggles with the revelation of his true destiny, after a lifetime of defining himself as the future Destroyer of Karishian. All he can do is reassure Morgorth that being the Savior is a far better fate for both of them. But as Morgorth and Aishe leap through worlds and dimensions in pursuit of a stone of power, more pieces to the puzzle of Morgorth’s destiny are revealed. And they form an image of sacrifice and tragedy.

The dark cloud of an ancient enemy looms ever closer, and the path to becoming the Savior might prove more monstrous than that of the Destroyer.

Sapphire: Home and Abroad
M.D. Grimm
Universal Buy Link
Release Date: Tuesday, June 14 2022
ASN: B09NTHVNYF
Cover Artist: Kris Norris
Series Title: The Stones of Power
Position (Number) in Series: Eighth
Necessary to Read Previous Books: Yes

Info for Other Books in Series:
1 – Ruby: Lost and Found
2 – Peridot: War and Peace
3 – Amethyst: Bow and Arrow
4 – Agate: Then and Now
5 – Emerald: Good and Evil
6 – Carnelian: Dreams and Visions
7 – Lapis Lazuli – Forgotten and Remembered

Warnings: Brief unwanted sexual advances

Excerpt

Morgorth stepped forward and stretched out his arms. He murmured a series of words under his breath and an opaque pinprick of light appeared. I stepped a bit closer, fascinated. The pinprick grew into a swirling, pulsing liquid silver gateway. It was beautiful and ominous. It made no sound, and yet gave off pressure that I felt against my body, and the hair on my arms stood on end.

The few trees bordering the clearing creaked and groaned as they bent away from the portal. I didn’t hear anything—not birds or squirrels, not deer. Nothing was near us, and the poor, stationary trees were doing their best to also get away.

Morgorth fisted his hands and widened his stance, still muttering. His skin glowed, and I silently shifted to his side. His eyes were a burning amber, his expression set in stubborn determination and intense concentration. Sweat slid down his face. The portal pulsed a bit faster, the beat knocking against my ribs. What was he doing?

Then the silver gained a bluish color before darkening to mossy green. Morgorth grunted and lowered his hands, though his magick still glowed.

“Take my hand,” he said in a stiff, strained voice. “And hold on tight, to both me and your bow.”

I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. I clung to my bow as I took his outstretched hand and pressed to his side. His skin was hot to the touch but not burning.

“What can I expect?” I asked.

“Discomfort and weirdness,” he said with a hint of a smile. “Just don’t let go.”

“Never.”

Then Morgorth ran and yanked me with him. We dove into the portal without hesitation, and he was right about the discomfort and weirdness. It wasn’t the emptiness of teleportation nor the whiplash of magickal speed. Morgorth charged through the swirling green, dragging me along. The green slipped over my skin and hair like cold putty and tried to capture my feet in its murk. It seemed to last forever but I was certain it was only a moment or two. Then we were somewhere else.

I caught my breath and stumbled forward, still clinging to Morgorth. He didn’t let go either, his magick still at the surface. He took a cloudy crystal from one of the many pouches at his waist and bent to place it at the base of the portal.

This time, I heard his word of magick.

“Lelleknau.”

Words of magick were supposed to be nonsensical, something each mage created for themselves. It was personal, each new word linked to a spell and used for nothing else. It took both words and hand flourishes for a mage to cast a spell or secure an enchantment. It was different for magick healers like myself. It wasn’t so much magick healers used, it was our life essence, gifting a part of ourselves to our patients. Give too much and it could kill us. The missing part of our essence would replenish over time, faster if we were happy and balanced.

To open a portal and redirect it was remarkably heavy magick, and my mate never ceased to leave me in awe of his abilities and his continual growth in both strength and intelligence.

“Will the crystal leave the portal open?” I asked.

He nodded. “Only on this side, though. We don’t want anyone or anything following us.”

“I doubt any of Vorgoroth’s creatures want to follow.”

Morgorth shrugged and straightened. “I don’t want to take the chance. And I wasn’t just thinking of my minions.”

He was thinking of our guests. Probably about Lyli.

I sighed. Yes, that girl was fearless and far too curious for her own good. And wherever Lyli went, Olyvre wouldn’t be far behind. Then Elissya would also come.

“This will also prevent any of the creatures here of getting inside. The crystal is also a shield.”

“Clever.”

“Draining,” he said with a sheepish grin. His magick settled into his core, causing his eyes and skin to lose their glow. “It won’t hold for long. In and out, no sightseeing.”

I snorted and glanced at our surroundings. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

A thick, dense jungle surrounded us, and I was only now noticing the oppressive heat. My skin broke out in sweat and my clothes soon stuck to me in the most uncomfortable way. I exhaled sharply and let go of Morgorth to wipe at my brow.

“Aye, in and out, please.”

Morgorth grimaced as well and readjusted the bag.

“I hope you can track the bloody thing.”

“I don’t sense magick like on Karishian so it shouldn’t be a problem to open my third eye and spot the box. And if for some reason that doesn’t work, I can always try to meditate and find its aura and track it back to its location.”

“Wouldn’t the box shield the stone’s power?”

“Its power but not its signature. According to Melondia, the box doesn’t have enough layers to truly block it. Think about the layers of Geheimnis. A mage could use their third eye but not spot the stones I have in the tower because the barriers are too thick.”

I nodded, and he closed his eyes. This place did feel… empty. Magick was everywhere in Karishian, in the land, the water, in the creatures. In the sky and in the clouds, and in the sun. In the air itself. I didn’t like it here. I shuddered and fingered my bow. The familiar texture of the wood soothed me just enough to unclench my muscles.

I kept an eye on our surroundings as Morgorth once again called to his magick.

About the Author

M.D. Grimm has wanted to write stories since second grade (kind of young to make life decisions, but whatever) and nothing has changed since then (well, plenty of things actually, but not that!). Thankfully, she has indulgent parents who let her dream, but also made sure she understood she’d need a steady job to pay the bills (they never let her forget it!). After graduating from the University of Oregon and majoring in English, (let’s be honest: useless degree, what else was she going to do with it?) she started on her writing career and couldn’t be happier. Working by day and writing by night (or any spare time she can carve out), she enjoys embarking on romantic quests and daring adventures (living vicariously, you could say) and creating characters that always triumph against the villain, (or else what’s the point?) finding their soul mate in the process.

Connect:
Website
Facebook
Goodreads
Liminal Fiction
QueeRomanceInk
Amazon Author Page

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New Release Spotlight — THE SHACKLES THAT HOLD US: A Magi Accounts Novel by Michele Notaro

As if crushin’ on a shifter wasn’t bad enough, I had to go and date one.

A mage and a shifter walk into a bar… No, that’s the whole joke.

Magi and shifters don’t mix, and yet I find myself in a relationship with Cosmo, a lion shifter. And on top of that, Cosmo, and all his pride members, consider my brothers and me to be a part of their pride. Three magi in a shifter pride. Who would’ve ever thought?

Navigating our connection while trying to figure out what’s going on in the world isn’t easy. Trusting that Cosmo means forever when he says it? Even harder. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned since meeting the Ono-Nais, it’s that taking a risk with my heart will be worth it to be a part of their lives.

The Shackles That Hold Usis a 113K novel and the second book in the MM urban fantasy series, The Magi Accounts. It’s recommended to read the series in order because it has an ongoing storyline.

*Intended for adults only. Please read the trigger warnings at the beginning of this novel.

The Shackles That Hold Us
Michele Notaro
Release Date: Tuesday, June 7 2022
ASN: B09QW2J3L7
Cover Artist: Natasha Snow
Series Title: The Magi Accounts

Info for Other Books in Series:
Book 1 – The Scars That Bind Us
Book 1.5 – A Kiss To Revive Me (novella)

Trigger Warnings: Violence, torture, mentions of past abuse, mentions of past sexual assault (nothing on-page), claustrophobia (you can skip chapter nine if you’re worried about this one).

Excerpt

Sure enough, a minute later, I heard Cosmo bounding up the stairs. I knew it was him because of the way the bond around my heart reacted. The door burst open with way more force than necessary, and Cos rushed to me, dropping to his knees beside the bed and pulling me into a hug.

His arms were around my neck—avoiding my sensitive back—so I wrapped mine around his waist and realized he was shaking.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I whispered.

He tucked his face into the side of my neck and shook his head.

“Talk to me, honey.” I made a disgusted face at the endearment that accidentally came out of my mouth. But I didn’t take it back—progress.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Sure doesn’t seem that way to me.”

He sighed, nuzzled into me, and breathed deeply. “I needed to see you.”

“Okay…”

“I’ve been… uh, worried.”

“Why? Did something happen at work?”

“No. I’ve just been worried… about you.”

“Oh.”

He waited a beat. “That all you have to say?”

“Uh, yeah. Not sure what else there is to say.” I shrugged against him, then winced from my skin. Goddess, how long was it going to be sore?

“You could try making me feel better.”

“How?”

“By admitting you missed me, too.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I might’ve missed you a teeny tiny bit. Like so miniscule it was hardly noticeable.”

He snorted. “Prickhole.”

I smiled and rubbed his back, then turned my face toward him so I spoke forhis ears only since I knew Jude and River were eavesdropping. “I did miss you, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Cos, really.” I waited a few seconds. “You make the best pillow, and you’re so warm that I’ve been freezing since you left.”

He barked out a small laugh. “I can always count on you to keep me humble.”

I snorted, then gripped him tighter and tucked my face farther into him. “I do miss you when we’re apart, kitty cat.”

A small rumble started vibrating his chest, and I smiled as I sighed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw River and Jude walk out of the room, but I didn’t pay them any attention, not when I had a sweet and sexy lion in my arms.

Cos leaned back and captured my mouth with his, kissing me as tenderly as he held me, and I let him. Sometimes his gentleness was almost painful in its sweetness, but it was a hurt I wanted to feel.

His tongue caressed mine, taking its time and exploring my mouth like we had all the time in the world. It made my heart race and my chest warm and my belly fill with a thousand butterflies all at the same time.

When he broke the kiss, he nudged my nose with his, smiling when I opened my eyes, and he whispered, “Hi.”

I blinked a few times, staring at those golden eyes. “Hi.”

He pressed a lingering kiss to my lips before meeting my gaze again. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“Really? Or is this one of those times when you’re acting like you’re okay even though you’re not?”

I scowled at him. “I said I’m fine, which means I’m fine.”

He gave me another peck.

About the Author

Michele is married to an awesome guy that puts up with her and all the burnt dinners she makes—hey, sometimes characters are a bit distracting, and who doesn’t plot when they’re supposed to be cooking? They live together in Baltimore, Maryland with two little monsters, three-legged and four-legged fiends, and a little old man (aka their two sons, their two cats, and their senior dog). She hopes to rescue another cat soon, and if her hubby wouldn’t kill her, she’d get more than one… and maybe a few more dogs as well.

She loves creating worlds filled with lots of love, chosen family, and of course, magic, but she also likes making the characters fight for that happy ending. She hopes to one day write all the stories in her head—even if there are too many to count!

Connect:
Website
Facebook (Personal)
Facebook (Author Page): @Author.Notaro
Instagram: @MicheleNotaro.Author
Goodreads
Amazon Author Page

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New Release Spotlight — SHADOW OF THE GYPSY by Shelly Frome

Shadow of the Gypsyby Shelly FromeJune 6 – July 1, 2022 Virtual Book Tour

A nemesis out of the past suddenly returns, ​forcing Josh Bartlett to come to terms with his true identity.

Josh Bartlet had figured all the angles, changed his name, holed up as a small town features writer in the Blue Ridge. He’d just give it a few weeks more and then begin anew, return to the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut and Molly (if she’d have him) and, at long last, live a normal life. After all, it was a matter of record that Zharko had been deported well over a year ago. The shadowy form Josh had glimpsed yesterday at the lake was only that—a hazy, shadow under the eaves. It stood to reason his old nemesis was still ensconced in Bucharest or thereabouts. No matter what, he simply wouldn’t travel over eight hundred miles to track Josh down, hook into his life, put him under the gun and ruin everything. Surely not now, not after all this.

“Sharp writing, and a keen pace keep this story rolling.”
– Lee A. Jacobus, author of Crown Island and Hawaiian Tales

“Shadow of the Gypsy is intriguing, complicated, and mysterious. . . ”
– Tina M. Zion, award winning author and international teach of intuition

“By turns charming and chilling, Shadow of the Gypsy is that rarest of gems, a crime novel that curdles the blood, even as it tugs on the heartstrings. . . “
– Jaden Terrell, author of A Taste of Blood and Ashes, River of Glass, A Cup Full of Midnight, and Racing the Devil

“Once you start, you won’t want to stop reading . ..”
– Jana Zinser, author of The Children’s Train: Escape on the Kindertransport and Fly Like a Bird

Book Details:

Genre: Crime Fiction
Published by: BQB Publishing
Publication Date: May 5, 2022
Number of Pages: 330
ISBN: 1952782570 (ISBN13: 9781952782572)
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Shadow of the Gypsy Book Trailer:

Read an excerpt:

Quickly, he was outside in the snow again, searching frantically for the Christmas present. Trudging through the stands of evergreens in his slippers, shivering so hard he couldn’t stand it, frozen crusted pine combs under foot till he spotted the van in a clearing. There were shouts and threats. There was a bloodcurdling scream. He thrust himself forward to see, though for the life of him he didn’t want to see, didn’t want to ever know. A dagger flashed in the moonlight. Zharko’s hand raised up and plummeted down over and over, finally cutting off the screaming for good.

Spinning around, Josh scurried over the pine combs and raced off, shaking with fear and cold, searching for the Christmas present. Longing to join the kids beyond the woods, snug inside, embraced by their mothers and the warmth of the hearth, glistening presents dangling under the tree laced with tinsel and garlands of spangled light.

He thrashed around seeking this first-ever Christmas present that would make everything nice but found only his pillow and woke with a start. He sat up. There was no going back to sleep opting for dreamy images of walking to school with Molly as the weather turned to spring, buttercups lining the path. No way to erase anything. He was left with the same chill again from this morning turning into an ache that had no name.

An ache it was useless to gloss over.

Quickly, he was outside in the snow again, searching frantically for the Christmas present. Trudging through the stands of evergreens in his slippers, shivering so hard he couldn’t stand it, frozen crusted pine combs under foot till he spotted the van in a clearing. There were shouts and threats. There was a bloodcurdling scream. He thrust himself forward to see, though for the life of him he didn’t want to see, didn’t want to ever know. A dagger flashed in the moonlight. Zharko’s hand raised up and plummeted down over and over, finally cutting off the screaming for good.

Spinning around, Josh scurried over the pine combs and raced off, shaking with fear and cold, searching for the Christmas present. Longing to join the kids beyond the woods, snug inside, embraced by their mothers and the warmth of the hearth, glistening presents dangling under the tree laced with tinsel and garlands of spangled light.

He thrashed around seeking this first-ever Christmas present that would make everything nice but found only his pillow and woke with a start. He sat up. There was no going back to sleep opting for dreamy images of walking to school with Molly as the weather turned to spring, buttercups lining the path. No way to erase anything. He was left with the same chill again from this morning turning into an ache that had no name.

An ache it was useless to gloss over.

***

Excerpt from Shadow of the Gypsy by Shelly Frome. Copyright 2022 by Shelly Frome. Reproduced with permission from Shelly Frome. All rights reserved.

Interview with Shelly Frome

Which is your favorite minor character and why?

J.J. is streetwise, a former “juvie” from the wild side of Waterbury, Connecticut who doesn’t stand on ceremony and tells it like it is. Which forces Josh, my main character, to get off his mild-mannered conventional behavior patterns and begin to face the realities of life, especially when in the company of nefarious criminals who are either using him or about to, in one way or another, do him in.      

What is your favorite personality trait of your bad guy/girl?

Zharko is a paranoid, rogue gypsy who thinks everyone from America and from the old country of Hungary and Romania is out to get him.  Therefore he is always on edge, thinking and conniving all the time in broken English.

Tell us something funny about one of your characters.

Noah Ackerman has spent so much time living in New York City that he thinks being pushy is the best way to get his new Southern lady therapy clients to wise up and dump their husbands.

Were you surprised by the behavior of any of your characters or the direction of your plot at any point while writing?

I was surprised to learn that any of Ackerman’s pushy advice was actually applicable, especially references to Teddy Roosevelt’s daring greatly which transported the work into a semi mythic hero’s journey.

Of all the books out there, why should readers choose this one?

Perhaps this pre-publication response says it best:  “By turns charming and chilling, Shadow of the Gypsy is that rarest of gems, a crime novel that curdles the blood as it tugs on the heartstrings.” Jaden Terrell, Mystery Writers of America

Is there an underlying theme in your book? If so, tell us about it and why/if it’s important to you.

I’ve been unable to deal with traumatic early childhood memories. By coming up with a fictional dynamic I’ve been able to vicariously live through the fact that the past is never past and is always out there waiting, restless, until all that unfinished business is finally acted out and resolved.

When you first begin writing a new book, is your main focus on the characters or the plot?

My main focus is on acquiring enough knowledge about the setting, the times and the life until whatever I’ve lost or never had or is troubling or intriguing me has a resonant foundation that will foster my irrepressible quest.  

Do you write a book sequentially, from beginning to end? Or do you sometimes write scenes out of order?

A dramaturge at the Hartford Stage once suggested that I go where the energy is. Sometimes I have to go back to a passage that never came to life and add some provocative intensifier. Sometimes when it seems like “and then this happened, and then that” I have to shake things up or deepen what I’m working on until I have the impetus to go on until, once again, everything is  self-generating and I’m fully engrossed in “the ride.”   

If you could go back to any place and time in history, where would you go and why?

I would go back to those heady days in Greenwich Village and the theater district and re-experience my encounters with artists and people like my old pal Joan Rivers in order to be less naïve and impressionable this time and come to terms with what really matters in life.

What personality traits do you most admire in others?

Sensitivity, honesty and a sense of wonder and imagination so that any and all encounters deepen, flourish and inspire.

The photo, by the way, is of my pal and companion Baxter.

BaxterAbout the Author

Shelly Frome is a member of Mystery Writers of America, a professor of dramatic arts emeritus at UConn, a former professional actor, and a writer of crime novels and books on theater and film. He also is a features writer for Gannett Publications. His fiction includes Sun Dance for Andy Horn, Lilac Moon, Twilight of the Drifter, Tinseltown Riff, Murder Run, Moon Games, The Secluded Village Murders, and Miranda and the D-Day Caper. Among his works of non-fiction are The Actors Studio: A History and a guide to playwriting and one on screenwriting, Shadow of the Gypsy is his latest foray into the world of crime and the amateur sleuth. He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Catch Up With Shelly:
www.ShellyFrome.com
Goodreads
BookBub – @ShellyFrome
Instagram – @AuthorShellyFrome
Twitter – @ShellyFrome
Facebook – @ShellyFrome

 

 

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Join In:This is a giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Tours for Shadow of the Gypsy by Shelly Frome. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.

 

 

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New Release Spotlight — GOLDHAMMER: A James Flynn Escapades Novel by Haris Orkin

A young actress, involuntarily committed to City of Roses Psychiatric Hospital, plunges James Flynn into a dangerous new adventure when she claims one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood is trying to kill her.

Still convinced he’s a secret agent for Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Flynn springs into action, helps her escape and finds himself embroiled in a battle with a dangerous sociopath worth billions. In the process, he uncovers a high-tech conspiracy to control the mind of every human being on Earth.

With the help of his reluctant sidekick, Sancho, and a forgotten Hollywood sex symbol from the 1960s, Flynn faces off with Goldhammer and his private army in a desperate attempt to save the young actress…and save the world…once again.

Praise for Goldhammer:

“One of those books that has you laughing and turning pages well into the night.” —Len Boswell, Bestselling author of The Simon Grave Mysteries

“A riotous comic novel that’s also a legit page turner. A deftly plotted, swiftly paced thriller.” —R. Lee Procter, Author of The Million Dollar Sticky Note and Sugarball

“A fast-paced quixotic thriller that would make Miguel de Cervantes and Ian Fleming proud. The third James Flynn novel is a powerful cocktail of suspense, adrenaline and a whole lot of laughs. Orkin has the remarkable ability to keep the reader straddled between a genuine spy thriller and an off-the-wall comedy” —Joe Barret, Award-winning author of Managed Care

Book Details:

Genre: Comedy Thriller
Published by: Black Rose Writing
Publication Date: June 23rd 2022
Number of Pages: 240
ISBN: 1684339677 (ISBN-13: 978-1684339679)
Series: The James Flynn Escapades, Book 3 | Each is a stand-alone thriller
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:Chapter ONE

The Corsican wanted him dead.

Of that James Flynn was certain.

Somehow, the assassin had infiltrated Her Majesty’s Secret Service as a security officer. Flynn didn’t recognize him at first. The killer had put on a few pounds and likely had plastic surgery, but what he couldn’t disguise were his eyes. His cold, dark, pitiless eyes. The eyes of a sociopath. The eyes of an executioner.

The only question was when.

When would the Corsican come for him?

He told his colleagues what he suspected, but they refused to believe him. They claimed his name was Thomas Hernandez and that someone else on the security team had recommended him. They also said they fully vetted him. But Flynn wasn’t fooled. He tangled with the Corsican before. The man was relentless. A cold-blooded enforcer who started with the Corsican mafia but went on to do contract hits for the Sicilians, the Albanians, the Serbians, and the Russians.

Instead of waiting for the Corsican to come to him, Flynn decided to flush him out. Force his hand. Expose him for who he was and why he was there.

Flynn dressed in black denim and a black turtleneck and waited until 2 a.m. to make his move. He kept to the shadows as he trod the deserted corridors. He had no weapon since lethal weapons of any kind were now forbidden at headquarters. A foolish rule put in place by sheltered bureaucrats who had no clue. Luckily, not even security could carry a firearm at headquarters. All the Corsican had was an expandable baton and a Taser. Even so, the man was lethal enough with just his hands and feet.

But then, so was Flynn.

Flynn heard footsteps ahead and ducked into a conference room. He waited and listened as the footsteps drew closer. As they passed the doorway, Flynn peered into the corridor to see the Corsican lumbering forward, quietly peering in room after room. Suddenly, he stopped. Flynn felt a jolt of adrenaline. The air was electric. The silence palpable. Could the Corsican feel Flynn’s eyes on him? Flynn knew that scientists have identified a specialized group of neurons in the primate brain that fire specifically when a monkey is under the direct gaze of another. Humans also appear to be wired for that kind of gaze perception. Predators like Flynn and the Corsican can also be prey and have developed a sixth sense to alert them to danger.

The Corsican turned and he and Flynn locked eyes for a moment. Before the hit man could take a step, Flynn took off down the hall in the opposite direction. He heard the footfalls of the Corsican as he chased after him. Flynn had his route all mapped out. Darting down one corridor. Then another. Running until he arrived at a door that led down to the basement and the guts of the building. Flynn had picked the lock after dinner, knowing that this was the night he would lure the Corsican to his end. He had a license to kill and could have used it anytime, but Flynn didn’t exercise that power willy-nilly. Only as a last resort. He didn’t want the Corsican dead. He needed to know who put the price on his head. Otherwise who ever hired the killer would continue to send hitters until finally one succeeded.

The building that housed HMSS was huge and had a substantial infrastructure. The basement utility plant had mechanical, electrical, HVAC, and plumbing systems that fed water, air, and electricity all through the facility. Flynn moved from massive room to massive room, staying just ahead of the Corsican. He needed to lose him and lay in wait. Flynn was confident in his abilities, but to come at a killer like that head-on didn’t make much sense. Why give your opponents any edge at all?

Flynn ducked into a room that housed all the electrical panels, distribution boards, and circuit breakers. Conduit snaked everywhere and Flynn found a metal door secured with a heavy padlock. Using two straightened paper clips, he quickly picked the lock. The door led to an outside area protected by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The security fence surrounded three giant transformers and two massive backup generators the size of semi-trailers.

Flynn stood next to the door and strained his ears to hear approaching footsteps over the electrical buzz of the transformers. Faint at first, they moved closer. Careful. Slow. Stealthy. He saw a shoe as someone came through and Flynn took them from behind, using jiu-jitsu to slam them into the ground.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said the man Flynn had face down in the gravel.

“Sancho?”

“Get off me, man.”

Flynn released his comrade-in-arms and helped him to his feet. Bits of gravel still clung to his face. “I thought you were the Corsican.” Flynn’s British accent had a touch of Scottish burr.

“His name is Hernandez,” Sancho said.

“That’s not his real name.”

“And I’m telling you, he’s not the Corsican.”

“Don’t let him fool you, my friend. He’s not who he says he is.”

“Then why’d he call me? He knows I know you. He knows we’re friends. He asked me to find you. Talk to you. Calm you down.”

“Perhaps he wants to take care of you too.”

“Take care of me?”

Flynn heard the Corsican call to them, his voice deep and resonant. “You okay in there, brother?”

“We’re good,” Sancho said.

The Corsican walked in with two other men. All three wore the blue security uniform issued to those who guard HMSS. The Corsican looked at Flynn with his dark, merciless eyes. “You okay, Mr. Flynn?”

“Tell them who you are,” Flynn demanded.

“Thomas Hernandez.”

“Who you really are.”

The Corsican rolled his eyes and sighed. “That’s who I really am.”

Flynn aimed an accusatory finger. “I know who you are. Born Stefanu Perrina in Porto, Corsica. Contract killer for the Unione Corse, the Cosa Nostra, and the Russian mafia. Wanted by Interpol for fifty-two confirmed kills.”

“I was born in Hacienda Heights.”

Flynn glanced at Sancho. “The man is a master of deception. It’s kill or be killed with men like him.”

The Corsican drew his Taser and the other two guards followed suit.

Sancho raised his hands. “Whoa, come on now. Easy.” He stepped in front of Flynn as the Corsican fired. The Taser darts caught Sancho in the shoulder and socked him with fifty thousand volts. He screamed in agony as his whole body seized up and shook. His legs gave out and he fell on his side, helpless and twitching.

Flynn dove behind a generator before the other two guards could fire. Each guard stalked him from a different side. Flynn clambered up over the top and launched himself from above, tackling the Corsican. He wrenched away his reloaded Taser and shot one of the guards in the crotch. The man went down with a shriek as the other guard fired on him. Flynn fell to his knees and the darts parted his hair before hitting the Corsican in the chest. The killer crumpled as Flynn sprang to his feet and pulled the Corsican’s expandable baton out of its holster. Flicking his wrist, Flynn fully extended the menacing club and turned to confront the last standing guard.

Someone grabbed Flynn by the arm and Flynn elbowed him in the face. Sancho staggered back, holding his bloody nose. “What the hell, man?”

“Sorry, mate.”

Flynn heard a Taser fire and an instant later, two darts hit him in the side. Fifty thousand volts took him to his knees as another guard fired another Taser. Those two darts hit him in the stomach. Flynn lost control of every muscle in his body. And then he saw the Corsican looming over him with his own weapon. He shot the darts directly into Flynn’s chest. Right over his heart. Now all three lit him up with electricity. One hundred and fifty thousand volts rocked Flynn as they shocked him with charge after charge until the world faded into a tiny aperture that slowly began to close.

***

Excerpt from Goldhammer by Haris Orkin. Copyright 2022 by Haris Orkin. Reproduced with permission from Haris Orkin. All rights reserved.

Interview with Haris Orkin

Tell us about your main character.

James Flynn is a forty-three year old mental patient at City of Roses Psychiatric Hospital in Pasadena, California.  He is suffering from a severe delusional disorder and believes that his hospital is actually the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Convinced he’s a double 00 agent with a license to kill, he keeps himself in perfect shape by constantly exercising and watching his diet. He has taught himself multiple languages using the Pimsleur method and reads everything he can about anything he can. He tells people he has a black belt in karate even though his training consisted of watching YouTube videos on martial arts and then practicing the moves on his own. Flynn calls Dr. Michaels, the head psychiatrist at City of Roses, “M” and believes he’s the head of  the Secret Service. Quentin, an elderly patient who shares Flynn’s room, is convinced he invented everything from Liquid Paper to the Corn Dog.  Flynn refers to  him as Q and is sure that all the other patients work for the secret service as well.  Born Jimmy Flynn in Van Nuys, California, he lost his parents in a terrible car accident at age ten.  He loved spy movies from the 1960s and developed an imaginary personality to protect himself. Over time, he became the most capable and powerful person he could imagine; a secret agent with a license to kill.

What is your favorite personality trait of your main character?

His total confidence in himself and his abilities. Such an insane level of confidence requires a certain amount of delusional thinking. 

What is your favorite personality trait of your bad guy/girl?

The best James Bond books and movies tend to have the best villains. A character with a powerful point of view and the passion to make their dreams of world domination come to pass.  I find that’s true of my Flynn novels as well.  One of the biggest challenges is to come up with a surprising and interesting and believable super villain. Someone with an ingenious plan and a very idiosyncratic point of view. Each antagonist has a distinct personal philosophy. They also believe they are the hero of their own story. That single minded belief in themselves is my favorite personality trait. Flynn has that same trait. Total confidence in his world view. Those two opposing points of view create a monumental conflict when they collide.

Please share a few favorite lines or one paragraph.

There is usually a scene in most thrillers where the bad guy explains himself to the good guy. Since I was just talking about Flynn’s antagonists and their world view, I’m going share a short monologue from the second book in my Flynn series, “Once Is Not Enough.” 

“Democracy? Seriously? You know as well as I do that most people aren’t very smart. And the more computers do for people, the stupider they get. They don’t bother learning anything, because they assume all human knowledge is right there at their fingertips. They become more and more ignorant until they lose their ability to reason or understand even the simplest things. Facts become meaningless and they are easily swayed by idiots and their lies. Look who they elect to lead them? The stupid leading the stupid. No, we tried democracy and it was a grand experiment, but look where it led us.”

If your book was made into a movie, who would you like to play the lead characters?

Steven Spielberg, if you’re reading this, I believe that Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch would both make a great James Flynn.  Harvey Guillen who plays Guillermo in “What We Do In The Dark” would make a fantastic Sancho.  

How did you come up with the title?

This is the 3rd book in the Flynn Series. The first book’s title, You Only Live Once, was a satirical take on the 12th James Bond novel. You Only Live Twice. The second book had some of that Bond flavor, but played off the first title. Once Is Never Enough.  Goldhammer brings to mind Goldfinger. Though the characters and situations and themes couldn’t be more different.

Is there an underlying theme in your book? If so, tell us about it and why/if it’s important to you.

The Flynn series is about how everyone lives in their own slightly delusional version of reality.  We can only see things from our own limited perspective and how we see things isn’t always how other people see things. Another way to say it is we’re all living in our own reality bubble. With social media and its effect on politics over the last few years, we can see that playing out on a large scale. Look at QAnon. That seems like a mass delusion. Unless you believe it’s true, then you think everyone else is living in a Matrix-like reality and won’t see the truth. Each religion is its own separate delusion.  Believing in certain scientific theories are considered by some to be a delusion. Our society seems to be coming apart at the seams because we can’t seem to agree on any universal truths. Every character in the book is living a delusion of their own making.  Flynn’s might be the most extreme, but everyone is lost in their own belief system. Each villain in each of the books has their own world view which they think is the right one. And their raison d’etre is to force the rest of the world to follow their version of the truth. 

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Look at the Spanish Inquisition. The Crusades. All of history is about this. Capitalism vs communism. Democracy vs authoritarianism. 

Each person has their own separate reality and those who are most successful convince others to believe in that reality. Flynn believes so deeply and completely that he’s an international super spy, he convinces others and eventually turns those delusions into reality. (Kind of.) And there’s a lot of comedy in that. Tragedy too. It’s all how you look at it.

About the Author

Haris Orkin is a novelist, a playwright, a screenwriter, and a game writer. His play, Dada was produced at The American Stage and the La Jolla Playhouse. Sex, Impotence, and International Terrorism was chosen as a critic’s choice by the L.A. Weekly and sold as a film script to MGM/UA. Save the Dog was produced as a Disney Sunday Night movie. His original screenplay, A Saintly Switch, was directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starred David Alan Grier and Vivica A. Fox. He is a WGA Award and BAFTA Award nominated game writer and narrative designer known for Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Tom Clancy’s The Division, Mafia 3, and Dying Light.

Catch Up With Haris Orkin:
www.harisorkin.com
Goodreads
BookBub – @HarisOrkin
Instagram – @HarisOrkin
Twitter – @HarisOrkin
Facebook – @AuthorHarisOrkin

 

 

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