Melissa Bowersock's Blog, page 16

Writing, Madness, and Voice

Some time ago, an article on the Thought Catalog talked about the relationship between writing and mental illness that sparked quite a discussion. My colleague Lynne Cantwell gave a very thoughtful and intelligent response here. For many of us, the most offensive paragraph (of several) in the original article was this:The common theory for why writers are often depressed is rather basic: writers think a lot and people who think a lot tend to be unhappy. Add to that long periods of isolation and the high levels of narcissism that draws someone to a career like writing, and it seems obvious why they might not be the happiest bunch.To my mind, this author made many ridiculous and unsubstantiated assumptions, but I’ll confine my response to two of them. Per his paragraph above,People write because they are drawn to isolation.People write because they are highly narcissistic.I have a different theory. I believe people write because that is the voice that serves them best. Let me explain this through my own experience.I was born the youngest of three children and was four years younger than my sister, who was a bully. We shared a bedroom, but I had zero say about what furniture it had or how it was arranged, what stuffed animals I could have on my bed, even what time the light went out at night. All that was dictated by my sister. My parents were unequipped to deal with a bully and unequipped to protect me. I learned early on that if I told on my sister and my parents punished her, I’d only get it worse the next time we were alone. Self-preservation demanded that I keep silent and cope the best way I could, alone. I believe that since I did not have a literal voice growing up, the words I wrote on paper became my true, authentic voice. Whether writing fiction or writing in my journal, this was the most expedient way for me to cope with any problems that I had. Writing was not only my passion, my escape, my solace — it was my salvation.Going back further, my own father, an artist and a writer, had a stuttering problem. He would adamantly avoid any kind of public speaking, but on paper his voice soared. He wrote articles, essays and eventually his autobiography, giving dramatic voice to all the experience, the lessons, the joy he found in life, all those things he could not easily share with his speaking voice.I’ve heard from many other writers that they had a similar background — oppressed or ridiculed in some way — and it doesn’t surprise me a bit that they turned to pen and paper to give voice to their real thoughts and feelings. If we, as human beings, are challenged by our surroundings, we have two choices. We can buck the system or we can adapt and mold ourselves into some semblance of whatever our environment requires of us, which may also mean suppressing the truth about who we are. That truth, I believe, must have a vent or it will create its own outlet in unpredictable and sometimes violent ways. Writing (indeed, any form of creativity) will provide that outlet via often secret yet socially acceptable avenues.At the very least, it sure beats taking out an assault rifle and shooting people.So are writers mentally ill? Are they narcissistic recluses, lost in depression or alcohol? While there has to be some smattering of that across any demographic, drawing a direct line of cause and effect between writing and those maladies is just plain hogwash.I would take it the other direction. What if Hemingway or Fitzgerald had not written? Would they have been less depressed, or more? Would Hemingway not have committed suicide? Would Fitzgerald not have been an alcoholic? Although there’s no way to quantify any of this, I would guess their states of mind would have been much worse, not better, if they had not written.The writers I know are not only coping with life, they are coping well, thank you very much. And they are thriving. The writing itself is a huge part of that.Originally published by Indies Unlimited on April 3, 2014

Actively Seeking Reviews

My first two books were published by a NY house back in the 80s. Both historical (western) romances, they did fairly well, and the publisher put them through several iterations over a course of years. When the publisher finally let them fall out of print and reassigned the rights to me, that's when I first began exploring self-publishing in order to keep the books viable. I reverted back to my original titles for them (the trad-pub titles were typical; each book had "Savage" in the title) and published them myself. Only problem was, the reviews for the originally published titles disappeared. So I am actively looking for reviews in exchange for a free e-copy of my book, Superstition Gold. 



Here's the book description:
Beautiful Leigh Banning travels to the wilds of frontier Arizona in an effort to understand the father she never knew. Her quest leads her to a remote Apache camp in the company of a proud Pima Indian and a handsome cavalry officer. Torn between the two men, Leigh joins forces with the Apaches to battle gold-hungry killers and in the process discovers her true self and her one true love.

If this sounds like something you'd enjoy, please order the book from Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/128891 and use coupon code SK75K. You can order whatever your e-book format might be, whether Kindle or Nook or e-pub or...? Every type of e-book file is available. The coupon is good through May 30.

Thanks greatly in advance! Enjoy!

Writing Letters to the Dead

I know well the therapeutic power of writing. Over the last few decades of my life, I have often used writing to get a grasp of and process some crisis or another, large or small. Writing about an  issue gives me a unique perspective that simple contemplation does not. If I only think about a problem, I find myself going over the same ground again and again with no resolution in sight. If I write about it, once I'm able to set down the prickly points of the issue on paper, I find I can move on to the underlying causes, the "so whats" and the "what ifs." I can follow a trail of writing much like a trail of breadcrumbs, going further and further into the dark woods of my psyche to the core of the issue. Once I've reached that point of understanding, I can choose my response: change something outside of me, change something inside of me, or make no change at all.

Writing letters to the dead is a great way to deal with grief and loss. Just recently, a very dear friend of mine passed on. It wasn't a total surprise--she'd been ill and had entered Hospice care--but the incontrovertible finality of it caught me off guard. Imagining someone's death and the experiencing the reality of it are two totally different things. For whatever reason, we seem to always think we'll have time to say the important words, to do the loving, comforting things. Maybe we hold off because saying and doing those things before death shows up at the door feels inappropriate, but that window of appropriate timing is very small and often appears--and disappears--without warning. Suddenly, irrevocably, that opportunity for last words is gone.

We know how we feel inside. We know the words we meant to say. But we didn't get to say them.

Enter the letter. Now we have the means to say all the things we didn't before. No, it's not exactly like having a face-to-face conversation, but it's the next best thing. And I've noticed two things about writing such letters. My belief structure tells me that once someone has passed over, they now know everything in my heart and mind, which means (1) I don't need to explain myself. Conversely, however, because of (1), there is (2): I can't lie. There's no lying, no manipulating the truth. The letter has to be excruciatingly honest.

Beyond that, the rest is easy. Say what you need to say. Words of love, sorrow, hope, amends. Words from one heart to another. Words that rise above and go deep down.

Writing a letter like this goes a long way toward closure, toward resolution, toward peace. You know you've done everything you can. They know it, too. The grief won't abate--only time will do that--but you just might find an  oasis of comfort in having that final conversation.

Serving the Story

A while back, The Guardian ran a story about J. K. Rowling admitting she erred when she had Hermoine end up with Ron rather than Harry Potter. In the article, she is quoted as saying, “I wrote the Hermione-Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron.”I imagine a ton of Harry Potter fans were extremely angry over this pairing, and to my mind, they were absolutely right. I don’t think betrayal would be too strong a word to use here. The chemistry between Hermoine and Ron was never of the type or the depth as that between her and Harry, so to toss in a curve ball like that is just dead wrong.And I understand entirely why she did it.In one of my latest books, Stone’s Ghost, I had the ending and the last line written before I had the first chapter done. The last line was a one-word text from the main character to his girlfriend, and it brought the story full circle and ended on an upbeat note. I really, really liked this ending.
Then I finished the rest of the book, guiding it down to those last few paragraphs, only to find that my ending didn’t fit.But I liked that ending. I tried to shoehorn it in. I rewrote the last page over and over, changing the build-up, trying to twist the story to fit my image of the end. It was like trying to fit a piece of two-by-four into a long, elegant section of crown molding.It just didn’t work.I finally had to admit defeat. I finally had to own up to the fact that my ending was not right for the story. It ended the story on a cheap shot, a sharp left turn from nowhere, and it brought with it no sense of satisfaction, of completion, of resolution.I knew I had to throw it out.But it wasn’t easy. I let the book lie untouched for a couple of days, let the chatter in my head die down as I slowly got used to the idea of not using my prize ending. Then I went back, deleted the last two pages and started in again.Only this time, I let the story dictate the ending.I’ve blogged before about how writing is like building a wall, each sentence building on the one that came before, each sentence providing the foundation for the one to come. This time when I wrote, I let that happen. The direction of the story, the tone, the tilt, the emotion, all guided me to the ending that it needed to have. It was not something I would have envisioned before, but this time, when I wrote the end, it worked. I knew as soon as I typed the last period that this ending was it — the best, the only, the perfect fulfillment of a great story.*Happy dance*And of course at this point, I was perfectly happy to leave my original ending in the waste basket now that I had the one the story needed, but it was tough for a while. It’s funny how we can get so attached to one idea that it’s almost painful letting it go, but at some point we writers have to realize that we aren’t writing for ourselves. We’re writing for the story. That’s our lord and master, and our egos have to take a back seat to that. To do anything less is cheating the story, cheating the characters — and, ultimately, cheating our readers, as Rowling found out.The only place for wishful thinking like that is in our private journals, written by flashlight in the dead of night, never to see the light of day.Everything else must serve the story.
This post was originally published by Indies Unlimited on March 20, 2014

Information, Please: The JustAnswer Experience

When I was finishing up one of my last novels, Stone’s Ghost, I realized I needed some help. My main character lived in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and owned a Sea-Doo rental shop on the lakeshore near the London Bridge. Part of the story concerned his dealings with a difficult customer who manhandled one of the rented Sea-Doos. As I was writing, I took a wild guess at ways a customer could foul up a Sea-Doo, but I really had no idea. When I got to the editing stage, I knew I needed to check the facts to make sure I was telling a credible story.I did the usual searching online but after several days and scores of sites, the specific information I needed was not coming up and I realized I had to do a much more targeted approach. I found JustAnswer and decided to give it a try.On their website, they describe their 4-step service like this:
1. Ask a question
Enter your question, and create a user account.Place a refundable good faith deposit.JustAnswer will send an e-mail notifying you of any answer or request for information from an Expert.A positive rating pays the Expert and tells us you’re happy. If you got great service, consider adding a bonus. That’s all. We guarantee your satisfaction.2. Name your price3. An Expert answers, often within minutes, usually within a few hours4. Rate the answerThey boast of having over 100 categories and they run the gamut from legal to medical to electrical and plumbing to relationships and clock repair (separately, not together). Since I wasn’t having much luck elsewhere, I decided to give it a try and typed in my question about small watercraft.The “name your price” aspect is based primarily on urgency; the quicker you need an answer, the pricier it will be. Mine wasn’t all that urgent — I still had plenty of editing to go — so I chose a less expedient degree and my price was $19.
I got a response back the very same day from a marine mechanic. JustAnswer provides the expert’s credentials and experience, and my guy had 39 years of experience and was a Certified Master Technician. Seemed like just the guy I needed.
My initial question had not been very detailed, so my expert asked me to clarify exactly what I was after, and we went back and forth a couple times before I was able to really zero in on what I needed. (If I knew what I was talking about, it would have been easier, but then I wouldn’t have needed the help, would I?) In any event, we got to the crux of the issue in just a couple of exchanges and by the end of the day, I had my answer. Perfect! I paid, rated my expert and went on to clean up that portion of my book. I was a happy camper.
Will I use JustAnswer again? Definitely! This will be my go-to place for those picky little things that I need to be authentic for my books but things for which I don’t need to do an online course to learn the entire discipline. As far as I’m concerned, this is a gonga deal.
Originally published by Indies Unlimited on 2/6/2014.

Author Interview: Phyllis Lawson

MJB: Today I’m sitting down with Phyllis Lawson to talk about her new book, The Quilt of Souls. As I understand it (I have not read the book yet), the story is of your growing up and the legacy of your grandmother who made very special quilts. The fabric that she used for her quilts came from people who had passed on, thus imbuing the quilts with their stories and qualities, and paying homage to them. I find this to be amazingly personal craftwork. How did your grandmother develop this idea? Was it her own idea or did she learn about it from someone else?
PL: The making of quilts was a skill that was passed down from her mother.  My grandmother was born in 1883.  Her mother was Choctaw Indian and African.  My great grandmother’s quilting skills were based on both her Native American and African culture.

MJB: A great many people in the US have that blend of Native American and African. It will be interesting to see how those two very different cultures were comingled in the quilting process.
You have one of these quilts. Do you know of everyone who is represented there? Can you tell their stories?
PL: I know about 75 percent of the individuals whose cloths are represented in my quilt; my grandmother passed on to me their stories.
MJB: I would guess that your grandmother had her own amazing story as well. Did she tell you about her early life and about moving beyond the yoke of slavery?
PL: Yes.  My grandmother had a very interesting story to tell.  Even though she was born about 16 years after slavery was abolished, she told me the stories that her mother passed down to her including the brutality of slavery. Some of these stories were of her sisters and brothers who were born years before and were sold to other plantation owners.  All the quilts that she sewed over those many years were all hand-sewn.  She also was the primary caretaker for my grandfather who was considered disabled.  As a result, she plowed and farmed, tilled and reaped the land single-handedly.  She was in her 70s at that time.  In addition, she made quilts for anyone who asked. 
MJB: Like so many of her generation, she simply did what needed to be done without complaint. That kind of wide-ranging hard work seems so foreign to us today. I have a feeling this book could point up all the things that we, in our time, can be grateful for.
How long did it take you to write this book?
PL: About 16 months from start to finish.  I had made a promise to myself long ago that once I retired from the military, I would put my heart and soul into telling Grandma’s story.
MJB: Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?
PL: Yes, many parts.  Particularly when looking back on those days sitting under the old oak tree with my grandmother as she told the stories.  Most of them were of how these individuals endured the pain and suffering of that time.  I actually felt their pain as I wrote the earlier chapters of the book.  I cried a lot and laughed a lot as well. During that time, not only are their stories of the quilt, but also of all the colorful characters that I came in contact with over those nine years.  It was very impactful looking back over the years that I spent with her, watching her cry as she told some of the stories.  Imagining how painful it must have been for her.  Losing her family and friends in the most horrific ways you could ever imagine.  Even with all this pain in her heart, she still found the will to love and care for anyone who was in need regardless of skin color.  Her death at 103 and my time spent with her shortly before she died was heart wrenching for me to revisit.  Maintaining Grandma’s dialogue and regurgitating many of her truisms was also difficult.  Trying to keep her voice consistent and in a manner where the general public could understand was challenging.  Remembering them was easy; putting it on paper was tough.
MJB: It sounds like an extraordinary, bittersweet experience, and she sounds like an amazing woman. I’ve learned that the height of love that we feel for someone is reflected in the depth of the pain we feel when they are gone. That’s obviously very true of you and your grandmother.
What part of writing the book came easily?
PL: Reminiscing about my grandmother was very easy.  I have never met anyone like her in all my life.  Even though the stories themselves were heart breaking, it was almost as though I could hear her every word as I put these stories to paper.
MJB: Have you always wanted to write, or was it just this story that drove you to the keyboard?
PL: I wrote poetry as a way of soothing the struggles that I had to endure during my teenage years.  The love of poetry eventually turned into a love of story writing.
MJB: We all know writing can be therapeutic. What did you learn about yourself during the writing process? What did you learn about human nature and the human condition?
PL: During my teenage and early adulthood years, writing was my catharsis.  It was a way to soothe my anger, my hurt and the abuse that I had to endure as a teenager.  The most prolific realization that I encountered during the writing of this book was realizing that I had developed forgiveness.  I didn’t ever think that I could forgive my mother for the physical and mental abuse that I had to endure once I was returned to her home.  To see my life on paper and be able to chart my progress was truly amazing. I was able to see myself as I grew into adulthood without carrying all the negative baggage from my past.  I could have easily turned into the angriest person on the planet.  I was able to recognize how those valuable life lessons my grandmother passed on to me impacted my choices.  This was particularly true in my early teen and adulthood years.
MJB: It sounds like you have found the best possible combination of benefits from writing: story-telling and your own personal growth. I don’t think there’s any doubt that writing about our lives gives us a unique and compassionate perspective.
If you could hand this book to your grandmother, what do you think she would think about it? What might she say to you?
PL: My grandmother never took credit for any of her good deeds.  She would definitely defer to the person who wrote the book and all the other hands that were involved in making this book a reality.  As you read the book you will gain a better understanding of this statement.
MJB: I wrote a book about my aunt who was a prisoner-of-war during WWII. The entire time I was writing, I was very conscious of what she might think of the book, and therefore I was very careful about what I wrote, being true to the facts without embellishment. Did you feel similarly that your grandmother—and/or other relatives who have gone on—was watching over your shoulder? Did that make it easier or harder to write the book?
PL: These were the most powerful moments in writing this book.  I could actually feel the presence of all those souls whose stories are captured in this book.  So many nights I shed tears.  Somehow I knew they were somewhere smiling down saying thank you for telling our stories.  I often wondered whether I was actually conveying everything about them that I wanted others to know.  Even now it seems that I have shortchanged them somehow.  Writing this book has been a spiritual journey through and through.  I’d sometimes take my quilt and wrap it around my shoulders.  Sure enough I could feel the spirits of those folks who lived so long ago.
MJB: That sounds wonderful. I have a feeling all your ancestors are very, very proud of you. A book like this is the greatest homage we can pay them, and keeping their stories alive means the experiences live on for others yet to come. It’s a moving tribute.
Anything else you’d like to add?
PL: This book speaks to anyone who has faced oppression or suffered from difficult times. All people will respond to this book because it tells a story of innocence encountering a harsh world. The book will also appeal to anyone with fond memories of their grandparents.


MJB: Now, where can people find out more about you?
Webpage
FacebookAmazon
E-mail: quiltofsouls@gmail.com

SELF-E Selection

I got some good news the other day. A month or so ago, I submitted my book, Stone's Ghost, to the SELF-e program here in Arizona. If you're not familiar with it, this is how the program is described on their web page:

SELF-e is an innovative collaboration between Library Journal and BiblioBoard® that enables authors and libraries to work together and expose notable self-published ebooks to voracious readers looking to discover something new.

The idea is to make the e-book available to library patrons for free, giving both the book and the author wide visibility and exposure. I submitted Stone's Ghost because it takes place in Arizona (near the haunted London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona), but the reality is that the book will be available on a much wider scale than I had thought. Here's the e-mail I received:

Congratulations--your book, Stone's Ghost, has been accepted into Library Journal's curated SELF-e collections! As your book is a featured selection we look forward to sharing it with subscribing libraries all over the country on BiblioBoard Library and helping to build a base of new readers. 

We anticipate the first Library Journal SELF-e curated collection will be available to libraries in mid-2015 and we will contact you when your book is available to readers nationwide.  
 
Your book will also be available to readers throughout your state in the Indie ARIZONA module as a "highlighted selection." The Indie ARIZONA module will launch when we have enough accepted books from ARIZONA.  Consult the "Where" page on the SELF-e site for more information about upcoming module releases. 

Hugh Howey has even weighed in on this thing:

"The SELF-e approach to curation combined with simultaneous user-access via public libraries will encourage books to be discovered and even go viral."

Pretty exciting stuff. I'm guessing that every state either has or will have a module of its own and that this will be a seamless national program once it gets up and running. Can't beat that kind of availability. I will definitely be looking forward to seeing how this pans out, seeing if readers take advantage of the program and if that exposure turns into more interest for my other books. Stay tuned for more information--and results--as I get it. 

Agents: Got One? Need One?

In a lot of the book forums I frequent, I often see posts by newbies asking plaintively how one goes about getting an agent. The traditional publishing segment, of course, continues to bleat out its timeworn advice to writers: get an agent, get validated by being traditionally published. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the only way to get “validated” is by doing things their way, playing by their rules? But that’s another post.
A much more interesting note is the fact that recently traditional publishers have found that combing through the growing ranks of indie writers is yielding a double bonus for them: these writers have already gambled on putting their voices out there and for some the public has responded positively. The traditional publishers are now taking a new look at the indie boom, since they’re finding (1) good books, already vetted by the public, with (2) a built-in following. The publishers are definitely seeing—and jumping on—the opportunities of the growing indie movement.

But the ones who are still dead-set against it? You got it. The agents, the very ones who are being marginalized by this new tete-a-tete. After all, if you can put your book out there, gather a following and possibly, eventually, get picked up by a traditional publisher, who needs an agent?
I had one once, through sheer serendipity. Eons ago, back in the middle Paleolithic, I used to write my books in longhand on blue line. By the time I got done with one, I was pretty well sick of it and I had no interest in typing it up (on a typewriter [electric, not manual. It wasn’t THAT far back!]). Luckily my mom was a good typist and volunteered to do it for me, so I shipped my 15-pound manuscript off to her.

Unbeknownst to me, she not only typed up my book but liked it well enough to shop it around to a literary agent she knew. He liked it, as well, and agreed to represent me.

All of a sudden **bam** I had an agent!

Initially things went well. He dutifully made copies of my ms and mailed it out to various publishers. He would let me know when he received a response of note, usually a rejection letter with nice encouragement, i.e., “Doesn’t fit our program at the current time, but has promise and we hope you will keep us in mind on future projects,” or something of that nature. As he was pitching the first book, I was writing the second. When he notified me that he had negotiated a contract for the first book, I was, understandably, over the moon.

Unfortunately my book took a little longer to make it through the process to publication than it should have. The company that originally bought my book went under; it was bought out by another. In the aftermath, the second company had to go through the backlog of contracts and decide which ones it wanted to keep and which ones it didn’t. I was lucky; it kept mine.

But it took four years before the book came out. In the meantime, of course, I was writing and figured my agent was earning his keep by sending out my second book. It was a jolt when I got a letter from my publisher asking if I had any other books they could see. Well, yes, of course I have other books. I promptly sent them my second book. They liked it and bought it. So now I’m thinking: what the heck is my agent doing?

Come to find out he was busy looking for properties for movie projects. He told me to quit writing westerns (both my first two books were western romances) because they didn’t translate well to the big screen. He had many ideas for what I should have been doing, but no interest in promoting what I was doing.

Needless to say, it was time to go our separate ways. That was back in, um, 1987. Since then, I’ve published 11 other books by various means, both traditional publishing and self-publishing. And I haven’t had an agent for any of them.

Do you need an agent? Only you can answer that question. The answer for me has been a resounding NO.


This article was originally published by Indies Unlimited on January 30, 2014

Author Interviews: Using the Tool to Your Best Advantage

There is constant discussion in online forums about how to promote our books, how to get our names out there in front of readers, and there are a zillion ways to do that. One such way is the author interview, a particularly friendly, chatty way to connect with our readers.I know, I know; many of us authors are introverts and not terribly comfortable talking about ourselves. We’d much rather stand behind our books and talk about them instead of ourselves. But it’s a proven fact that people are much more liable to buy books from an author if they feel they know and like that person, rather than just recognizing a name on a cover. And with social media on the rise, people are coming to expect more of that kind of connection with their favorite authors.Still not comfortable? Here’s a tip: don’t think of it as someone trying to drag intimate secrets from you. Think of it as a writing exercise. Each question is a chance to tell a mini-story, to expound, to weave, to fascinate as well as explain. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen something like this:Q. Did you do a lot of research for your book?A. No.Really? That’s it? Come on, you’ve just missed a great opportunity to talk about that time you almost got thrown in jail for breaking into your own car so you could write the process into your latest novel. Or that time you drove through New Mexico looking for a locale to match your character’s home town and you almost got beamed up by a flying saucer near Roswell. This is about more than answering questions—it’s about showing us your craft.Every chance we have to write, whether on paper or on the internet, is an opportunity to show our mettle. You know that old saw about writing that we hear over and over: Don’t tell us—show us. This applies to these interviews, too. Use the questions as a springboard to propel us into your imagination. Show us what you’ve got.For you interviewers out there, you have the opportunity to open up that author in unexpected ways. I know it’s easy to gravitate to the generic questions every interviewer asks—Who’s your favorite author?—but you’ve got the opportunity to make your interview unique. Spark up that interview with interesting questions. Here are a few suggestions:Ask open-ended questions. Don’t ask yes-or-no questions like the one above. Instead ask, “What’s your process when you’re researching a book?”Focus on the author. If you’ve taken the time to read some of the author’s work and checked out their webpage or blog, you can ask very specific questions about them and their work. For example: “In your new book, Hell on Wings, your main character base-jumps off a thousand-foot cliff naked with his hair on fire. What kind of research did you do for that scene?”Not only is the reader going, “Whoa, never saw that in an interview before,” but the answer is giving the reader a behind-the-scenes glimpse that expands his reading experience. It’s like watching “The Making of …” section on the DVD after you’ve watched the movie. Very often knowing the story behind the story gives you a greater appreciation and a more textured experience of the original movie. And in the above case, if the reader has not already read this particular book, this question just might move them to buy it.So get creative—on both sides of the interview!Originally published by Indies Unlimited on December 19, 2013.

Valentine's Day Sale

Love is in the air. In honor of Valentine's Day, it's time again to put those romances on sale.  I've got something for everyone: contemporary, historical, cuddly, sizzling and hilarious. Take your pick for only 99 cents each through February 14th. 



Superstition Gold Historical (Western) Romance

Married and widowed within a 24-hour period, beautiful Leigh Banning watches as her storybook New Orleans life crumbles away piece by piece. In a heartbroken attempt to start over, she travels to the wilds of frontier Arizona in an effort to understand the father she never knew and is rewarded with gold from the legendary Lost Dutchman gold mine in the Superstition Mountains. The gold comes with a price tag, however—the murder of innocent people. Leigh’s quest for justice leads her to a remote Apache camp in the company of a proud Pima Indian and a handsome cavalry officer. Torn between the fiery kisses of the Major and the respectful love of the Pima, Leigh joins forces with the Apaches to battle gold-hungry killers and in the process discovers her true self and her one true love. (Sensual)

The Rare Breed Historical (Western) Romance
The daughter of a white woman and an Indian warrior, "Gray Feather" Catherine Boudry had spent the first thirteen years of her life among the Cheyenne. Wrested from her home and taken to her mother's wealthy parents, Cathy grew into womanhood surrounded by all the civilized comforts of the white man's world. But at the age of twenty, the lure of her Indian heritage drew her back to the western plains. It was a journey that would awaken her to the joy and agony of passion in the arms of two very different men — Jory, the rough mountain man, and Barred Owl, the Cheyenne brave to whom she had been pledged in marriage long ago. (Sensual)
Remember Me Contemporary Romance Elly Cole wakes up bruised and battered in a hospital-and has no idea who she is or how she got there. Her brooding giant of a husband informs her that she had been fleeing with her lover who was killed in the car accident that left her injured, that she is pregnant with that lover's child and that she has nowhere else to go but home-with him. Struggling against the threat of her husband's dangerous rage and jealousy, Elly strives to regain her memory and reconstruct the life she left behind, wondering how she could ever have loved this man who hates her. (Sweet) FREE with Kindle Unlimited!


Lightning Strikes Contemporary Romance Jessie Evans is a free-lance journalist, emphasis on the "free," with no plans to tie herself down. While researching a story in Flagstaff about Indian influences in Arizona, however, she encounters Lucas Shay, a smoldering paradox who is part Indian, part architect and all man. Whether igniting her temper with his arrogance or challenging her beliefs with his laser-like insight, Jessie can't deny that Lucas sets fire to her soul as well. (Sizzling)
The Pits of Passion Satire Young, nubile Elizabeth Montgomery is too beautiful for her own good. Accosted by lust-struck males every time she appears in public, she is profoundly grateful when sea captain Benjamin Elliott saves her from a would-be ravisher. Her gratitude, however, turns to shock when Elliott himself seduces her and ruins her chances for an honorable marriage. Sealed to the man in an arranged marriage, Elizabeth rides the surging tide of shock and denial, lust and love, as she is swept from the manicured gardens of England to the savage shores of Africa and the wilds of the New World, never quite sure which Captain Elliott is the man she loves. Caution--this over-the-top satire is NOT your mother's romance novel! (Graphic and irreverent - not for the faint of heart)
If you haven't sampled these books before, now is the time. I think you'll like them. I certainly do! They're on sale through Valentine's Day, February 14th, so don't wait! Get yours today!