K.C. Sprayberry's Blog, page 83

The Memory Tree

Good morning. Welcome to Sharing Saturday. In keeping with the holiday spirit, we are talking with Susan Lynn Solomon today about her book The Memory Tree.
The Memory Tree
Blurb
In Central Florida, Farrell’s Orchards is no longer what it had once been. Deborah Hannel knows this. She and her sister, Leah, grew up here, raised by their Aunt Harriet and Uncle Max. Uncle Max is gone now, as is Leah’s husband; as are the husbands of several cousins. It seems divorce is as much a family tradition as Deborah’s oyster stuffing, and bringing new ornaments to hang on the Christmas tree. When Deborah arrives alone for Christmas at Farrell’s Orchards, will the ornament she’s brought to hang on the tree be a memory of another impending divorce?




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About Susan Lynn Solomon
Formerly a Manhattan entertainment attorney and a contributing editor to the quarterly art magazine SunStorm Fine Art, Susan Lynn Solomon now lives in Niagara Falls, New York, the setting of many of her stories. She is the facilitator of the Buffalo Writer’s Critique Group.                        Since 2007 her short stories on serious topics have appeared in numerous literary journals. These include, Abigail Bender (awarded an Honorable Mention in a Writers Journal short romance competition), Ginger Man, Elvira, The Memory Tree, Going Home, Yesterday’s Wings, Smoker’s Lament, Kaddish, and Sabbath (nominated by the editor of Prick of the Spindle for 2013 Best of the Net and winner of second place in the 2017 Word Weaver Writing Competition). A collection of her short stories, Voices In My Head, has been released by Solstice Publishing.
Susan Solomon is the author of the Emlyn Goode Mysteries. A finalist in M&M’s Chanticleer’s Mystery & Mayhem Novel Contest, and a finalist for the 2016 Book Excellence Award, her first Emlyn Goode Mystery novel, The Magic of Murder, has received rave reviews, as have the novelettes, Bella Vita, and The Day the Music Died. The second Emlyn Goode novel, Dead Again, was a finalist for both the 2017 McGrath House Indie Book of the Year and the 2018 Book Excellent Award. In the latest Emlyn Goode Mystery novel, Writing is Murder, and the new novelette, A Shot in the Woods, Ms. Solomon once more demonstrates that murder has a sense of humor.


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Silent Night

Good morning. Welcome to Friday Feelings. In keeping with the holiday spirit, we are talking with Leigh Podgorski today about her book Silent Night.
Silent Night
Blurb
Can he capture wondrous enchantment?
Dill Karras, a brilliant, edgy set designer for the stage, has just lost another dream—his latest job for a prestigious regional theatre. He hasn’t been able to tell his wife, Izzy, a costume designer who’s been supporting them with the work she finds among the schools and small theatres of New York City. Izzy has a kind of magic, a way of looking at the world and seeing enchantment. Dill finds himself barely able to listen to the fragile dreams that pour out to him in a never-ending stream from the children of all ages that visit him in his role as Santa at Macy’s Santaland. His heart desperate, he counts down the minutes until a child with no voice but silence and magic in her fingers opens up a world of beguilement he thought lost forever to him.




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About Leigh Podgorski
I am an award-winning playwright and screen writer who began writing novels in 2010. My plays have been produced in New York City and Los Angeles as well as regionally. In 2006, with the help of a grant from the California Council for the Humanities, as well as numerous Southern California Indian Tribes, I was able to adapt my play We Are Still Here: the Story of Katherine Siva Saubel and the Cahuilla Indians of Southern Califormia to a documentary that I produced, directed, and wrote.
My work reflects my scholarship and fascination with the diverse cultures of the Earth and the mysticism and history that colors and influences the universe both within and without us.In 1985, I had the distinct privilege of interviewing Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross for my one-act play Windstorm. Here was a celebrated doctor who had penetrated the fourth wall, who saw visions, who communicated with the dead, and who, through her visions, taught us more about, as she said, not how to die, but how to live.
While producing the play festival CelebrateWomen, I interviewed another great woman, Cahuilla elder Katherine Siva Saubel. Dr. Saubel, like Dr Ross, was a great healer, and a great visionary. She could call the wind by whistling for it to blow down from the mountains to cool the steaming valley below.
“The film also portrays the Creation mythology of the Cahuilla, performed by a Native American cast, which is well done and sustains viewer interest. There are a lot of important ideas and traditions illuminated here. [The]film [s] will be appreciated by history buffs, students of Native American history, and general viewers.--Margaret B. Miller, Univ. of South Dakota Lib., Vermillion”--Library Journal Review.
I also worked for fourteen years as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Basic and Developmental Skills at Glendale Community College helping both adult and high school students earn either their GED or HS Diploma. Just as Elisabeth Kubler Ross said it was her patients who were her greatest teacher, so were my students my greatest teachers. Many, if not most of my GED students were immigrants, the vast majority working all day and coming to school at night. These students, through their deep and profound love of America, taught me all over again what it means to be an American.


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Slick's Special Christmas

Good morning. Welcome to Thursday Thoughts. In keeping with the holiday spirit, we are talking with Johnny Gunn today about his book Slick’s Special Christmas.
Slick’s Special Christmas
Blurb
Blizzards, wild cows with long horns, and singing buckaroos. It’s Slick’s Special Christmas.






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About Johnny Gunn
I've had a wonderful and varied time along this bumpy highway called life. I spent my early years in Santa Cruz, California, swimming, fishing, and wallowing in the splendor of redwoods, the Monterey Bay, and a loving family. Then, my four years of high school were spent living on the Island of Guam. That was back in the early 1950s Yes, Virginia, I am that old, but only in body, not spirit.
My first job in radio was in 1958. I bought the Virginia City Legend newspaper in that old western mining community in 1971, and retired from having a job in 2010. That's when I changed from being a reporter of news to being a writer of fiction, and over these last few years have found my western and crime/mystery stories published as novels and in magazines and anthologies, around the world.
My beautiful wife Patty and I live on a small hobby farm about twenty miles north of Reno, Nevada, sharing space with a couple of fine horses, a flock of egg-producing chickens, and some breeding rabbits. You're always welcome to visit. I need help cleaning those corrals.


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Christmas Between the Vines, Christmas Guardian Angel

Good morning. Welcome to wwwblogs. In keeping with the holiday spirit, we are talking with E.B. Sullivan today about her books Christmas Between the Vines and Christmas Guardian Angel.
Christmas Between the Vines
Blurb
While growing up on a vineyard, Lucia desperately wants a dog for Christmas. Fearing a puppy will ruin his vines her father denies her wish. Despite his decision, Lucia seeks a loving pet.



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Christmas Guardian Angel
Isabella purchases a picturesque Victorian house from handsome Marc. His magnetism stirs her emotions and pulls her into his troubled world. Soon Isabella realizes her new house, secluded in the woods, is haunted. By communicating with the house’s spirit, Isabella hopes to learn secrets, which can help Marc resolve his conflicted past and move him into the future. During the process, Isabella finds herself falling in love.







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About E.B. Sullivan
E.B. Sullivan, PhD is a clinical psychologist who loves writing fictional tales. She draws inspiration from the amazing people she has met and the magnificent places she has visited. Her home, nestled in an enchanting California forest, is an idyllic setting to stir her imagination in penning creative stories, novellas, and novels.


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Grace

Good morning and welcome to Tuesday Blog Share. Today, our story being featured is Grace.
Family during the winter holidays are supposed to be warm and loving during the winter holidays. That, however, is usually far from the truth. All Grace wants is a future and the assurance her aging parents will have one of her siblings close to be with them.

Blurb
Grace Winston yearns for one last family Christmas, but she has to convince her brothers and sisters it's worth their while to come home. Her reason for this is that her parents, while happy that she's been accepted at Oxford University in England, are pining away for their family to gather together. She manages to force her older brothers and sister to help out, to come home, but it's up to them to bring the other – a brother who attacked their father to get money to feed his drug habit, and a sister who recently gave up alcohol and is raising four children under the age of five without their daddies. The family does return home, and they surprise their parents, but Grace is soon wondering if this was really worth all the trouble she's gone through, when no one acknowledges her efforts to make this a Christmas to remember … until she receives an early gift that leaves her certain things will turn out all right.








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Excerpt

Grace Winston had celebrated her eighteenth birthday a mere three weeks ago, the same day as Thanksgiving. There were no thanks in her house, no special foods prepared to celebrate her becoming an adult, nothing to mark the day as unique.
Her parents hadn't said "Happy Birthday" until it was time to go to bed. Even then, the acknowledgement had sounded more like "goodnight."
It's not Mama and Papa's fault. They can't help how sad they are. My brothers and sisters should have come like they said they would. They're not even making false promises anymore. All of them claim that they have other plans for Christmas, and we need to get over our selfish desire to have the family together.
For as far back as she could remember, that day has been one where her whole family showed up, until her oldest brother, Adam, decided that he had too much work to spend a week at his childhood home. Mark begged off the next year, claiming his wife's job required him to appear at the White House. The others never bothered to make an excuse the year after that.
Grace blamed herself for her parents depression this year, after they sighed and accepted the inevitable. She was so excited to have been accepted at Oxford and to receive a full scholarship, so they didn't have to pay for her education. Mama and Papa stared at her with eyes full of loss and resignation, but they never congratulated her for her accomplishment after she showed them the letter last week.
I don't blame them. My brothers and sisters are at fault for how our parents feel, but I can't go to England with things the way they are.
Her heart lay heavy in her chest as she realized that Christmas would be the same lifeless day as Thanksgiving, unless something drastic happened. Her parents had been in a blue funk for the last year, due to the fact that their other children had turned their backs on the simple lifestyle in which they'd been raised, but Grace had a solution.









About K.C. Sprayberry
Living a dream she’s had since she first discovered the magic of books. K.C. Sprayberry traveled the U.S. and Europe before finally settling in the mountains of Northwest Georgia. She’s been married to her soulmate for nearly a quarter of a century and they enjoy spoiling their grandchildren along with many other activities.
A multi-genre author, K.C. Sprayberry is always on the hunt for new stories. Inspiration strikes at the weirdest times and drives her to grab notebook and pen to jot down her ideas. Those close to her swear nothing or no one is safe if she’s smiling gently in a corner and watching those in the same room interact. Her observations have often given her ideas for her next story, set not only in the South but wherever the characters demand they settle.

Find out more about my books at these social media sites:


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Authorgraph Email

Christmas Escape

Good morning. Welcome to Monday Blogs. In keeping with the holiday spirit, we are talking with E.B. Sullivan today about her books Christmas Escape.
Christmas Escape
Blurb
Lily hates Christmas. She has ugly memories of her alcoholic father spoiling festivities. She remembers him drunk, cursing, yelling, and hitting her brothers. As an adult, in order to escape Christmas, Lily vacations in warm places far from holiday fanfare. This year, while traveling from Chicago to Scottsdale, Arizona Lily meets a wounded Marine. Despite his scars, she’s immediately attracted to his seductive personality. She learns he’s about to attend his sister’s wedding alone. Lily takes a detour from her Christmas escape to be his date. At his family’s ranch, Lily experiences a different side of Christmas. One filled with the magic of giving.






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About E.B. Sullivan
E.B. Sullivan, PhD is a clinical psychologist who loves writing fictional tales. She draws inspiration from the amazing people she has met and the magnificent places she has visited. Her home, nestled in an enchanting California forest, is an idyllic setting to stir her imagination in penning creative stories, novellas, and novels. 


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One More Christsmas

Good morning and welcome to Sunday Blog Share. Today, our story being featured is One More Christmas.

The holidays are filled with excitement and joy, with happiness and expectations. What most people don’t realize is that the holidays can also be the worst time of the year for some families.

Blurb
One more Christmas is all Dawn wants. Is that too much to ask?
With a little more than a week before the holiday, fifteen-year old Dawn and her dad share a heart-wrenching secret about her mom. She’s dying of leukemia, but no one suspected a thing; they all just thought she was tired. All Dawn has to lean on is a prayer—that her mom won’t die before or on this special day, so her five younger siblings don’t have to remember that during the holidays in the future. Will she receive her wish?


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Excerpt

Robby Ryan got off the bus ahead of me. Not that I was that far behind him. We had the whole walk home, about a quarter mile on paved sidewalks, and no reason to hurry. He stopped and glanced at me, a sly smile on his face.
“Come on, Dawn. Quit being a slowpoke.”
We’d had a sort-of-friends relationship all our lives. He lived across the street and a few houses up from me in our little hometown of Monrovia, California. Robby was an older man, all of seventeen. I was fifteen for a couple more months, and that was the worst age to be in 1974. My parents were so old fashioned, saying I couldn’t even think about having a real boyfriend until I was sixteen—in February.
“I’m not a slowpoke,” I said to him, grinning. “Why are you rushing anyway? It’s not like we have anything to do except boring old chores.”
The illicit feeling of getting away with our budding romance sent a thrill through me. Who was I to argue with hormones? We had an attraction, built on years of each of us trying to outdo the other, a love of similar activities, even if my mom got all bent out of shape when I played football or went hiking in the hills above town.
“Any plans for our vacation?” he asked once I reached him.
“Plenty, but you know how it is.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Mom will probably decide to scrub the walls or move the furniture and I’ll have to help.”
A hitch in my voice was the only indication that my assessment of how I’d spend this break from school wasn’t quite the truth. Not that I’d tell a single soul that I’d been more of a mom to my brothers and sisters since Thanksgiving. Even Robby and his family didn’t know what was going on around our house.
Nobody knew, and it would stay that way as far as I was concerned.

                                                                                 
 

 




About K.C. Sprayberry
Living a dream she’s had since she first discovered the magic of books. K.C. Sprayberry traveled the U.S. and Europe before finally settling in the mountains of Northwest Georgia. She’s been married to her soulmate for nearly a quarter of a century and they enjoy spoiling their grandchildren along with many other activities.
A multi-genre author, K.C. Sprayberry is always on the hunt for new stories. Inspiration strikes at the weirdest times and drives her to grab notebook and pen to jot down her ideas. Those close to her swear nothing or no one is safe if she’s smiling gently in a corner and watching those in the same room interact. Her observations have often given her ideas for her next story, set not only in the South but wherever the characters demand they settle.

Find out more about my books at these social media sites:

Facebook Twitter Website Goodreads Amazon Author Page 
Google + Pinterest Manic Readers AUTHORSdb 
Authorgraph Email  

Her Cracked Heart

Good morning. Welcome to Sharing Saturday. In keeping with the holiday spirit, we are talking with P.A. Estelle today about her book Her Cracked Heart.
Her Cracked Heart
Blurb
A second chance for love with a ready-made family is at Stephanie Warren’s fingertips, but ghosts of the past have a strong hold.  Will she turn her back on happiness or can somebody break through her shell and help heal her cracked heart?








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About P.A. Estelle
My name is Penny Estelle.  I live in Sun City, AZ.  When I’m not writing, I’m playing water volleyball and pickleball with the “old” folks.  I also hike every morning and I’m thinking at trying my hand a tap dancing! We older folks are a gutsy group!  LOL
About my writing - I started writing for tween kiddos right before I retired.  There is always material when kids are involved.  These stories range from fantasies to time travel to puppy love.  I also have several picture books out for the beginning readers.
Under P. A. Estelle I write for the older “young at heart” crowd.  Most of my adult stories are contemporary and historical romances - in every genre.  I must admit historical western romances are my favorite – at least for now, but I have found one never knows what tomorrow will bring!

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Hide and Seek

Good morning and welcome to Friday Feelings. This month, we’re focusing on books and short stories that are thrillers and military. Edge of the seat action is going to have you panting for more from these fabulous books! Check out these intriguing stories from a stable of great authors!
Today, Michael Zolezzi joins us today to talk about his powerful thriller Hide and Seek…
Blurb
There are certain criminal cases that are talked about generations after the investigation is closed.

They are biopsied, broken down, with every move by the detective analyzed. These cases can make legends or goats out of the investigators.
In Hide and Seek, such a case lands in Detective Jake Skinner and his partner, Detective Dan Rico’s, laps. Having just transferred from South Bureau Homicide, Jake thought taking down an armed bank robber on his first day was as wild as the RHD ride got. He was wrong.The kidnapping of the wife of the mayor of Los Angeles, who also happens to be a federal prosecutor threatens the core of one of the world’s most famous cities. An internal power struggle, false leads, meddling media, the victim’s own family, and Jake’s personal struggles all threaten to derail the investigation, an investigation that leads to pure evil.


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About Michael Zolezzi
Michael Zolezzi is a Los Angeles Police Department twenty year veteran, and a detective supervisor. His past assignments include, Newton Area Gangs and Narcotics, 77th Area Detectives Sexual Assault Crimes, Robbery Homicide Division Cold Case Section and Robbery Special Section, Internal Affairs Division, and the Hollenbeck Area Gang Coordinator.

Michael has a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from San Diego State University. He is an active member in the International Thriller Writer Association. He lives in the Los Angeles Area with his wife and two children.


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She's Not You and The Looking Glass Labyrinth

Good morning and welcome to Thursday Thoughts. This month, we’re focusing on books and short stories that are thrillers and military. Edge of the seat action is going to have you panting for more from these fabulous books! Check out these intriguing stories from a stable of great authors!
Today, we welcome Judi Getch Brodman and her books She’s Not You and The Looking Glass Labyrinth…
She’s Not YouBlurb
A small, isolated fishing village on the tip of Cape Cod, a place where the town’s jail has one cell with a broken lock and the police force consists of the Chief and two deputies, seems an unlikely spot for dead women to be washing ashore. And yet, so far this summer, two bodies have been discovered on the morning tide, both resembling each other and Jamie Janson.
Jamie returns to Oyster Point to clean out and sell her grandaunt Pita’s Cape Cod cottage, a place filled with family memories – when there had been a family. Her homecoming is marred by the discovery of a woman’s body during her morning run along the beach. Huddled around the seaweed encrusted form is a group of men, including Oyster Point’s Chief of Police, Jack Hereford. Is their meeting destiny, chance or orchestrated by Pita? Jack soon realizes that Jamie’s emotional fragility belies her inner strength and courage – unspoken qualities by Pita when she asked him to watch over Jamie. That deathbed promise will turn out to be the toughest part of his job and maybe the best part of his life.
As Jamie settles into her life on the Cape, an unknown male with camera in hand shadows her everywhere – on the beach, around her cottage, even at Jack’s sister’s house. With her life spinning out of control, Jamie’s visions resume, dreams she hasn’t had since her parents were killed when she was sixteen. Making a vow to confront the stalker and keep him from forcing her to live in fear, she and Jack devise a plan to entice the suspected stalker out into the open. The scheme backfires and Jamie’s gone….



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The Looking Glass LabyrinthBlurb
An unheeded warning from her best friend, an estate sale at a “haunted” crumbling Victorian, a painted woman whose sparkling blue eyes follow her every move, a cracked discolored mirror that reflects another’s face, and mysterious words that materialize in a diary – all these events create a vortex through which Rachael Corbet is sucked back to 1804 and into Lady Rachael Johnston’s body. Why? Lady Rachael’s written words are quite clear, “You can and will save my captain.” Impossible – the man has been dead for centuries, shot and killed right here in this house. Trying to escape what she hopes is a dream, Rachael runs directly into the arms of Lady Johnston’s returning sea captain and totally understands why Lady Rachael desires to keep him alive… he’s takes Rachael’s breath away with his tenderness, strength and thoughtfulness. Is she falling for a man who died centuries ago? She would have to change the past to keep him alive. Yet history has a way of repeating itself. Unscrupulous rogues, including Lady Rachael’s pathetic brother, attempt to abduct her for her inheritance. A shot is heard; Nathaniel shouts for Rachael to run; she turns to flee and then, in an instant, chooses to alter history. If she saves him, will she give him up? Will she return to her pathetic life or choose to stay with the sea captain she loves?






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About Judi Getch Brodman
Judi’s software consulting work has taken her all over the world even out to the Marshall Islands where she flew to work each day.  Her bookshelves are filled with photographs and journals that capture her experiences and feed her imagination as she writes.  But her roots and true inspiration come from New England, in the mountains of Vermont and by her childhood beaches of Wellfleet on Cape Cod. 
In 2011, she began her writing journey with three published travel articles on Ireland, The Many Faces of Ireland, followed by a short story, Safe Harbor, published in July 2012.  Then, inspired by the death of her sister in 2015, Judi wrote and published two children's books, "Fiona - the Lighthouse Firefly" and "Fiona the Firefly - LOST!” both titles available on Amazon, the proceeds of which feed a scholarship fund that Judi set up in her sister’s name.  Scholarships are being awarded to students studying Business and Technology.
In her spare time, Judi is a professional watercolorist, reads, walks, gardens, and enjoys family and friends.  But wherever she is, her characters and their magical worlds fill her mind.  Judi has been involved with writers’ groups for years, has taken Creative Writing at FAU, and has worked with authors in workshops whenever possible.  She’s also an editor for Wiley’s technical magazine, Journal of Software: Evolution and Process.
Her debut novel (She’s Not You - a mystery with a splash of romance), has received excellent reviews… and a sequel is in the works!


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